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TEACHING 
THE LANGUAGE -ARTS 

SPEECH, READING, COMPOSITION 



/ BY 

B. A. HI]S"SDALE, Ph. D., LL. D. 

PROFESSOR OP THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING IN THE 

LTNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 

AUTHOR OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD AND EDUCATION; SCHOOLS AND STUDIES; 

THE OLD NORTHWEST ; THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT ; HOW TO 

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1896 



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EDITOE'S PEEFACE. 



The author of this volume has, in the course of his 
discussion of the theory and practice of teaching the lan- 
guage-arts, thrown light incidentally upon the teaching 
of all the other branches in the course of study. He has 
drawn judiciously upon the vast literature of his subject, 
and enriched his book with insights and keen observa- 
tions from Aristotle and Quintilian in Greek and Eoman 
times down to Spencer and Lowell of our own day. The 
book is in this respect a collection of fine thoughts on 
language — its use, its growth, the study of its mechanics, 
its grammatical and logical structures, the order of mas- 
tering its use in speaking, reading, and writing — first in 
the primary, next in the grammar school, and after in the 
high school and college; its place in the cultivation of 
the powers of thought, the study of literary works of art, 
the significance of philology among the sciences. 

In following his discussions, the reader will do well to 
ponder carefully the distinction made by the author in 
the second chapter between the mechanism or technique 
and the theory of the language-arts; also the array of 
facts drawn from child study in Chapters IV, V, and VI 
relating to the ideas in possession of the child at six years 
of age, and to what he acquires and can acquire through 
imitation. 

The author is at great pains to discriminate the me- 



vi TEACHING THE LAXGUAGE-ARTS. 

chanical and teclinical aspects of language study from its 
higher uses for guidance, culture, and discipline, and to 
give each its due place. The mastering of the mechanical 
and technical phases performs the great good of placing 
the child in relation to the repositories of the wisdom of 
the race so that he can use them. But it is their use, and 
not the mere possession of skill to use, that enables him 
to understand and interpret the world, and to penetrate 
the motives of human nature that govern the conduct of 
his fellow-men. 

In Chapters VII, YIII, IX, X, and XIII this higher 
function of literature is brought out. The prevalent 
tendency to magnify the means rather than the end to be 
accomplished leads frequently in school to the error of 
using so much of the pupil's time in preparing to read — 
that is, in mere formal reading, the calling of the words 
found in lessons written in the colloquial style — that little 
02")portunity is left for the practice of the art by reading 
the great literary works of art. But this error should not 
be corrected by the opposite extreme — namely, by offering 
the pupil in his immature years the solidest productions 
of prose and poetry and neglecting all formal studies with 
dictionaries, grammars, and spelling books. There arc 
many impractical people who would throw away these 
formal studies and hope to change the child mind into a 
mature mind at once. 

The discussion of the practice of paraphrasing in 
Chapter VIII places the matter in its trae light. It is 
only by paraphrasing the text of the great author — ex- 
plaining its meaning in his (the pupil's) own words — 
that the pupil can prove to his teacher that he under- 
stands it. The teacher in turn can show the felicities of 
the great writer best by comparison with the pupil's ver- 
sion, bringing out the superiority of the former in words 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. vii 

and diction. It has been truly said that the literary 
genius invents happy modes of expression for thoughts 
and feelings which were hitherto unutterable or inarticu- 
late in the soul. The pupil in studying such gems of 
expression learns at once the thought or feeling and its 
happiest conveyance in words — he thinks and feels and 
expresses for himself what the poet has taught him. But 
paraphrasing, if used in any way except to verify the 
pupil's understanding of the author and for teaching him 
the value of the words and diction used as compared with 
his, the pupil's own attempts, is mostly wasted time. 

In recent years there has been much so-called " lan- 
guage-study " in our schools ostensibly for the purpose of 
teaching the pupil how to write or compose with facility. 
He has been set at work writing numerous commonplace 
sentences about commonplace things. The result of this 
language-study has been described not inaptly as " gab- 
ble." The practice is a better one if it requires the 
pupils to write out in a connected manner what they have 
learned, say, on the occasion of a weekly written examina- 
tion, or, still better, to write out their ideas gained by 
reading and studying literary models. The dignified con- 
tent requires a dignified form. To write commonplace 
ideas in choice language always borders on the ridiculous. 

On entrance into school at the age of six or seven 
years, the child knows only the words and forms of dic- 
tion of the colloquial vocabulary. He has before him the 
hard task of mastering the new method of expressing 
words — that of script and printing; heretofore he has 
known words only as addressed to his ear. It is obviously 
the true method to teach him first the printed or written 
forms of colloquial words only — words already familiar to 
his ear. As soon, however, as this first mechanical stage 
can be passed, the pupil should begin the work on the 



viii TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

literary pieces. Each Hterary author has peculiarities of 
style, and draws words from the vocabulary outside of the 
colloquial list. He makes those partly unfamiliar words 
perform miracles of expression. The child should go on 
mastering one after another the one hundred or more 
pieces of fine writing which are generally to be found 
selected and edited for the school readers, although often 
mingled with other " pieces " that are of inferior merit. 
The teacher can, by a judicious use of books prepared for 
home reading, make the short selection in the reader an 
introduction to the reading of the whole work of literary 
art at home. A discussion of Gulliver's Lilliput or The 
Lady of the Lake will be a very profitable exercise in 
school after several pupils have read the entire work. 

Dr. Hinsdale has, in Chapter XV, noted the fact that 
the teaching of English literature in our schools has be- 
gun hitherto with its history. It has been not a study of 
literature so much as a study about literature. It is hoped 
that this evil is in process of removal. 

W. T. Harris. 
Washington, D. C, April 20, 1SD6. 



AUTIIOE'S PEEFACE. 



SiiTCE tliis work was written, and since much of it was 
put in t3^pe, the teaching of English in the schools of the 
country has once more been brought prominently to the 
public attention. Eeference is made to the late Eeport 
of the Committee on Composition and Ehetoric to the 
Board of Overseers of Harvard College, and the comments 
that it has called out in the press.* Eemarks on the 
present state of English teaching will be found scattered 
through the following pages, but it seems desirable in 
this preface to take a broader view of the subject. The 

. * Report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric to the 
Board of Overseers of Harvard College (1892), 

The Classics and Written English, C. F. Adams, Harvard Grad- 
uates' Magazine, vol. i, p. 177. 

The Root of the Evil, W. W. Goodwin, Harvard Graduates' 
Magazine, vol. i, p. 189. 

Report of the Committee on Composition and Rhetoric to the 
Board of Overseers of Harvard College, April, 1895. 

College English, The Nation, September 26, 1895, p. 219. 

School English, W. W. Goodwin, The Nation, October 24, 1895, 
p. 291. 

School English, C. P. Adams, The Nation, October 31, 1895, 
p. 309. 

College English, Caskie Harrison, The Nation, October 31, 1895, 
p. 310. 

A Plea for the Study of Latin Grammar, X, The Nation, Novem- 
ber 21, 1895, p. 362. 

ix 



X TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

new report from Harvard, like the former one of the 
same committee, is not devoted to the broad subject of 
teaching English, but to the narrow subject of teaching 
composition. My own remarks will be similarly limited. 

The main fact that is pressed home by the first re- 
port and reaffirmed by the second one is, that as the Eng- 
lish department at Harvard " is organized, under the ex- 
isting standards of examination, the college seems com- 
pelled, during the Freshman year, to do a vast amount of 
elementary educational work which should be done in the 
preparatory schools." And this view seems to be gener- 
ally accepted. 

The impression that has been made upon many minds, 
to the effect that the Harvard authorities hold college 
preparation in English now inferior to what it was for- 
merly, has no support in the documents. The contention 
is rather that the present preparation is discreditable to 
the young men who come to Harvard, and the reverse of 
satisfactory to the schools from which they come, but no 
comparison with earlier times has been made or suggested. 
Manifestly such a comparison would be peculiarly diffi- 
cult to make and of uncertain value, owing to the tend- 
ency of men in adult life to carry back into boyhood 
their later ideals and standards, and thus to mislead 
both themselves and others. It is possible that prepara- 
tion in English for admission to Eastern colleges is in- 
ferior to what it once was, but if the mass of the Amer- 
ican people are not better instructed in English than they 
were a half century ago or a quarter of a century ago, the 
fact is very discouraging, because constantly increased 
attention has been bestowed upon it in the schools. 

Men who pass an intelligent judgment on the college 
preparation of Freshmen must first answer the question, 
" How much should be expected of young men and 



AUTnOR'S PREFACE. xi 

women at the age of nineteen ? " In the case of English 
the answer will be found more difficult than in the case 
of most or all of the other studies. It is easy for prac- 
tised writers, like the Harvard Committee and Professor 
Goodwin, far removed as they are in memory from their 
own personal struggles to learn to write, and far removed 
also from the practical teaching of English in the schools, 
to look for more than can be reasonably accomplished. 
For example, after remarking that the average student in 
the Freshman class is two years older than formerly, the 
committee said in its first report : " It would certainly 
seem not unreasonable to insist that young men nine- 
teen years of age who present themselves for a college 
education should be able not only to speak, but to write 
their mother tongue with ease and correctness." Correct- 
ness is now the note of English prose style. Further- 
more, " ease and correctness " is a relative expression, and 
one can not tell just how much the committee means by 
it. But if the ease and correctness of the practised writer 
is what the committee has in mind, it is much mistaken. 
The obvious parallel between speech and writing must 
not be unduly pressed. The majority of men, even edu- 
cated men, never become as proficient in writing as they 
do in speech. Perhaps they could attain to the same pro- 
ficiency if they had the same practice in the one art as 
in the other, but this is an impossibility. The num- 
ber of men called educated who can not write good Eng- 
lish with ease, or even at all, is proportionately large. 
One could wish to see a collection of the verbatim and 
facsimile compositions of four or five hundred professional 
men, including a proportional number of college pro- 
fessors, written under circumstances similar to those that 
attended the writing of the exercises that are reproduced 
in the two reports. There are marked differences in per- 



xii TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

sons ; but for the average student who goes to college to 
create, and then to maintain, anything that deserves to 
be called a style, is one of the severest tests of mental cul- 
tivation. Again, Professor Goodwin, commenting on some 
translations that he quotes, remarks : " There is one charge 
that can not be brought against the writers. They have 
surely not neglected their English for Greek. They are 
simply trying to translate from one unknown tongue into 
another." This remark suggests that translation is a se- 
vere test of ability to compose. The translator carries on 
a double struggle : one is to get at the thought of the origi- 
nal, the other to express this thought in the vernacular. 
It has often been remarked that translations by great 
poets are inferior to their original work. Translations 
should indeed be held up to Professor Goodwin's test, but 
many a schoolboy has found that either one of the two 
struggles involved a sufficient tax upon his powers. 

So much it has seemed wise to say by way of moder- 
ating exaggerated ideas of schoolboy English; but the 
fact still remains that the English of the college Fresh- 
man is bad. Professor Goodwin scouts the idea that the 
preparatory schools that send pupils to Harvard have sin- 
gled out the mother tongue for neglect and contempt. 
Nothing could be further from the truth than to think 
that the neglect of English is justified by the high stand- 
ard of scholarship in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. " A 
similar test applied to any other department," he says, 
" would disclose a state of things in the lower ranks of 
scholarship which would be proportionally disreputable." 
There can be no doubt that the average American student 
at the age of nineteen, brought up in the secondary schools, 
is as much behind the English or Continental student of 
the same age in ability to compose in his mother tongue 
as he is in ability to perform other scholastic work. Pro- 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xiii 

fessor Goodwin says that boys of that age who come to 
Harvard College in most cases " are barely prepared to 
pass an examination which boys of sixteen or seventeen 
would find easy work in England, Germany, France, or 
Switzerland." He says, further, that at " Westminster 
School, London, boys of from fifteen to eighteen are study- 
ing Homer, ^schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, 
Lysius, Plato, Lucretius, Terence, Horace, Cicero, St. 
Augustine, St. Cyril, with algebra, trigonometry, conic 
sections, statics, and dynamics." Much of this work is not 
required for admission to Oxford and Cambridge, but it all 
counts for honours. The Professor says further : " There 
is no hope of a substantial change for the better until the 
elementary studies which now occupy the time from fifteen 
to nineteen are put back w^here they belong, so that young 
men can devote themselves in earnest to studies which 
belong to their age." From this point of view, therefore, 
the question, Why is the English teaching in the secondary 
schools bad ? is expanded into the broader one, Why is our 
secondary education as a whole bad ? 

This question has been much discussed the last few 
years, and in the course of the discussion it has been dis- 
covered that, in large part, the trouble lies below the sec- 
ondary-school level. The Harvard Committee and Pro- 
fessor Goodwin tend to excuse the secondary teachers from 
blame for the bad preparation of students for college. 
The trouble, they say, is with the " system." This is ex- 
tending the investigation to the elementary schools, which 
leads to the remark that the shortening and enrichening 
of the elementary course has been a favourite topic at 
educational meetings and in educational journals for some 
time past. I shall set down very briefly what appear to 
me to be the principal reasons why the American boy 
of nineteen, considered as a scholar, is two years in the 



xiv TEACHING THE LANGUAGE- ARTS. 

rear of the German, French, or English boy of the 
same age. 

1. The courses of study that lead French and German 
boys to the university have been brought to a high degree 
of perfection. The studies have been so selected and 
so co-ordinated that time is saved all along the line. 
For example, in the German gymnasium Latin begins at 
ten and Greek at twelve, while modern languages are 
brought in at an early stage, thus assisting materially the 
mastery of German. The gymnasium is not a finishing 
school, but every step from the first one is bent toward 
the university. Practically the same may be said of the 
French and English schools. In the United States, on 
the other hand, secondary courses of study have not been 
as well thought out and tested. Moreover, the double 
function of many of our schools, and particularly of high 
schools, has impaired their efficiency in both spheres. 
Eeference is made, of course, to the fact that these schools 
are at the same time finishing schools for life and fitting 
schools for college. To be sure, the courses of study in- 
tended for the two purposes more or less vary. Whether 
this impairment of the American school is inherent in the 
system or is due to defective co-ordination, need not be 
considered hero. 

The facts may be put in another way. In European 
countries schools are based on the existing social organiza- 
tion. The aim is to provide education for those youths 
who will pass out of school at thirteen or fourteen years 
of age, for those who will pass out of it at eighteen or 
nineteen, and for those who are destined for the higher 
institutions of instruction. These pupils are not taught 
together as far as the first class go, and the remainder are 
not all taught together as far as the second class go, but 
to a great extent arc separate almost from the time that 



AUTnOH'S PREFACE. XV 

they go to school, and are taught with reference to their 
supposed destination. All kinds of pupils may be taught 
together for the first three years, but this is not neces- 
sarily, or indeed commonly, the case. This is what may 
be called the " three-pyramid plan " of organizing schools. 
" The three courses of instruction," says Dr. Fitch, " pri- 
mary, secondary, and higher, may be compared to three 
pyramids of different sizes, though all in their way sym- 
metrical and perfect ; but you can not take the apex of 
the larger pyramid and set it on the top of the smaller. 
You may indeed fit on, with a certain practical conven- 
ience, the top of the higher scheme of education to the 
truncated system of the lower, provided you go low 
enough," etc. Our State school systems are organized on 
the one-pyramid plan. The comparative merits of the two 
plans for general purposes is a topic aside from the present 
purpose. But the three-pyramid plan has two obvious 
advantages. One is that courses of instruction can be 
made out with sole reference to completeness in them- 
selves, and the other that the abler pupils, who are the 
ones destined for college as a rule, are put by themselves, 
and so can move, even in elementary studies, at their own 
natural rate of speed. How far our social conditions would 
justify an attempt to reorganize our schools on this plan, 
and how far studies that are now taught exclusively in 
the secondary schools can be brought down into the ele- 
mentary grades, are very interesting questions. For one, 
I look with considerable confidence to the experiments 
now being made in the second direction. 

2. The teachers in the foreign schools, as a class, are 
superior to ours. They are better prepared to do their 
work, and they do it better. This preparation includes 
better scholarship, more distinct ideals, and superior teach- 
ing ability. These teachers know just what is expected of 
2 



xvi TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

them, and know thej will be held responsible for the re- 
sult. It is needless almost to refer to the fact that, on an 
average, they pursue their work for a much longer period 
of time. 

3. National tone is a not unimportant factor in the 
question. The industrial, commercial, and political ten- 
sion of American society is the highest known in the 
world. In this respect we are keyed up to the highest 
note. But in science, philosophy, and literature — that 
is, in the intellectual sphere proper — our tension is dis- 
tinctly lower than that of England, France, or Germany. 
The average intelligence may be as high in this country, 
or even higher, but our higher culture so called is of a 
lower grade. The high intellectual tension of the edu- 
cated class abroad is felt in the schools. There now lies 
before me a description of a German gymnasium written 
by a student of my acquaintance who passed through it, 
and I doubt whether there is a city in the United States 
where a school with such a regimen could be maintained. 
The key is too high for American life as now attuned. 

What has been said about general culture is particu- 
larly applicable to the language-arts, — speech, reading, 
and composition, which are a very delicate test of person- 
al cultivation. I have not hesitated to avow the opinion 
(page 54) that the relatively low standard of culture prevail- 
ing in the country, including teachers as well as pupils, is 
in large measure the cause of the low state of these arts 
in the schools. There is perhaps reason to think that the 
average cultivation of college students, including English, 
is lower than it was fifty years ago. Were not college 
students a more select body then than they are now ? Did 
they not better represent the highest cultivation of the 
country? Have not the great increase of wealth, the 
enormous material improvements that have been eifected. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xvii 

and the growth of population, together with the democra- 
tizing of society, tended appreciably to make American 
college students, as a whole, a more heterogeneous class of 
persons ? 

What is the final conclusion ? That we should remain 
satisfied with the teaching, and particularly the English 
teaching, as it is to-day ? By no means. The present 
work has been written in the faith that improvement is 
attainable. Two or three practical remarks may be made 
on this point. 

First. In the following pages I have laid constant 
stress on imitation in teaching the language-arts. Good 
models are insisted upon, I fear, to the weariness of the 
reader. Practice under suitable correction has also been 
emphasized. Remarking upon the proficiency in baseball 
and other athletic sports of the boys who come to Har- 
vard College, the committee asks how it is acquired, and 
replies that it does not come by studying rules printed in 
books devoted to athletic sports, or by listening to lectures 
on curves and the like, but by practice. "It is only 
through similar, daily, and incessant practice," says the 
committee, "that the degree of facility in writing the 
mother tongue is acquired, which always enables the stu- 
dent or adult to use it as a tool in his work." 

Secondly. The use of the word " tool " suggests a se- 
rious defect in many American schools. There is a great 
difference between set formal exercises in any art as an 
end in itself and the habitual use of the same art as a 
means or instrument to accomplish some other end. Mr. 
0. F. Adams, chairman of the committee, like many 
others, has remarked the difference between formal class 
spelling and spelling in ordinary writing. The same dis- 
tinction may be made in respect to penmanship and 
drawing. How very different the writing that children 



xviii TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

put in their familiar letters is from the writing that they 
put in their copy-books ! And the same in composing. 
"For want of practice," says Mr. Adams, "the scholar 
does not carry into his other and daily work the results of 
his teaching. He can write a formal composition, such as 
it is ; he can not render Greek or Latin into English." 
This is the crux of school composition. Nothing but 
plenty of writing, and particularly non-formal or extem- 
poraneous writing, as in the daily work of the school 
under a moderate tension of criticism, will transmute the 
pupil's specific skill into formal skill. How wide the dis- 
tance between the set composition and the extemporane- 
ous composition of the common pupil or student! We 
need more extemporaneous composition in the schools. In 
this respect the German or the English student is dis- 
tinctly better off than his American cousin. 

The third and last suggestion is that much current 
language teaching affects English composition unfavour- 
ably. " Sight reading," which rests on the assumption 
that the student should understand the author in the 
original, has for some time been the vogue in preparatory 
schools. X points out very clearly that the revolt from 
the grammar and dictionary has gone so far that a posi- 
tive deterioration of both classical and English scholar- 
ship has often resulted. He says students who come 
to Harvard, and picked ones, too, " have not even a con- 
ception of what accurate work means. They have ob- 
tained by practice a kind of knack of guessing at the 
meaning of a sentence; but in most cases they see it 
' through a glass darkly,' often very darkly." This writer 
thinks, accordingly, that some of the emphasis recently 
given to sight reading should be withdrawn, and more 
stress be laid on thoroughness. The traditional impor- 
tance assigned to translation as an English exercise may 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. xix 

be exaggerated. No doubt translation is sometimes a 
positive loss to the pupil's English rather than a gain, 
undoing, owing to slipshod methods, what formal in- 
struction has ^one. Still, good translation is an impor- 
tant ally of the English teacher. 

The purpose and scope of the present work are stated 
in the introductory chapter. While nothing more is called 
for on that head, a few words concerning its origin are 
deemed pertinent. 

More than ten years ago, while serving as Superin- 
tendent of the Public Schools of Cleveland, Ohio, my at- 
tention was closely drawn to the nature and relation of 
speech, reading, language lessons, composition, and lit- 
erature. I gave much thought to methods of instruction, 
and particularly to the correlation of the several lines of 
teaching. Afterward, when called to my present position, 
it became my duty to give instruction on these subjects as 
part of a course in the art of teaching. I now came more 
clearly to conceive of these arts as a distinct group by 
themselves, and to assign a new importance to imitation, 
and especially unconscious imitation, in learning them. 
Thus there gradually grew up, within the course referred 
to, a series of lectures denominated Lectures on Teach- 
ing the Language- Arts. These lectures, revised and ex- 
tended, comprise this work. Whatever may be its merits, 
it has grown out of practical experience, and has been 
matured by reflection. 

Those teachers who are abreast of the best current 
practice in the schools will find nothing in the book relat- 
ing to method that is very novel or original. The claim 
to merit must rest on these particulars : First, the clear 
conception and description of speech, reading, and com- 
position as arts ; secondly, the large place assigned to use 



XX TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

and want, to models and imitation, and the small place 
to reflective art in teaching them ; and, thirdly, the 
grounding of the several teaching processes in the funda- 
mental facts of human nature. In other words, this is a 
book of principles illustrated by methods rather than of 
methods illuminated by principles. If this claim be al- 
lowed, I do not hold it to be a slight merit. With noth- 
ing do the teachers of the country stand in need of closer 
familiarity than with educational principles. Principles 
do not supersede methods ; facts, rules ; theory, practice ; 
science, art: but principles, facts, theory, and science 
must, in the long run, govern and control all practical 
applications. 

I have not therefore sought to add another to the list 
of " Lessons " and " Exercises " in English, " Composition 
Books," and the like, which is already so long, but rather 
to show the ends to which such books should look, the 
methods to which they should conform, and the reasons 
for such conformity. Exhaustive treatment has not been 
aimed at. The purpose has been to confine the discussion 
to schools ; and if much of it has an application to col- 
leges, as indeed it has, the reason is that the leading 
principles set forth are unlimited by grade lines, but are 
continuous. 

My thanks are due to my friend Professor I. N. Dem- 
mon for valuable aid in preparing this work. I have had 
the benefit of his criticism on many special features of 
the work, and, what has been of greater value, have en- 
joyed repeated opportunities to discuss the subject with 
him in its general bearings. 

B. A. Hinsdale. 

The University of Michigan, December 14., 1S95. 



CONTEXTS. 



PAGE 

Editor's Preface v 

Author's Preface ix 

CHAPTER I. 
The Scope of the Present Work 1 

The Liudley Murray conception of grammar, 1, 2 ; Professor 
Greene's books, 2, 3 ; the present state of English in the schools, 
3, 4 ; aims of the present work, 4, 5. 

CHAPTER II. 
The Language-Arts Defined 6 

Science and art, 6 ; two phases of art, 6 ; the school studies and 
school arts discriminated, 7, 8 ; the two phases of the language- 
arts, 9, 10 ; effects of VtTong classification, 10, 11. 

' CHAPTER III. 

The Vernacular as an Educational Instrument . . ,12 

Language and mind, 12-14 ; language a factor in national culture, 
14, 15 ; a factor in individual culture, 15-18 ; Professor Laurie and 
Dr. Schurman quoted, 18-20. 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Work of the Elementary School 21 

The child's mental possessions at the age of six, 21, 22 ; the work 
of the primary teacher, 22-24 ; authorities quoted on vocabularies 
of children, note^ 24, 25. 

CHAPTER V. 
The Origin of the Child's Knowledge 26 

Fundamental facts of the mind stated, 26-28 ; the child's ideas at 
the age of six grouped, 28-32. 

xxi 



xxii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VI. 

PAGE 

The Origin of the Child's Language 33 

The child's instinctive vocal utterance, 33, 34 ; the child uses his 
voice to express mental states, 34, 35 ; the office of imitation, 35- 
39 ; no trace of rule or formal method, 40 ; authorities quoted on 
imitation, note^ 40-42. 

CHAPTER YII. 

The Language-Arts in the Lower Grades . , . .43 

Professor Laurie's analysis of language, 43, 44 ; child first deals 
with language as substance of thought, 44, 45 ; methods of in- 
struction : conversations, stories, object lessons, reading lessons, 
selections of poetry memorized, and written exercises, 45-50 ; eth- 
ical value of language lessons, 50, 51 ; association, 51, 52 ; rules, 53 ; 
language agents classilied, 53, 54. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Language-Arts in the Higher Grades and in the 

High Schools 55 

Changes of school regimen to come slowly, 65 ; former methods 
to be employed, 56 ; copying and dictation, composing themes, 
paraphrasing, imitation of chosen models, and translation, 56-61 ; 
etymologies, 61-63 ; history in words, 63-65. 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Art op Reading CG 

The printed page, 66, 67 ; relation of the author to his composition, 
67 ; the function of the reader, 67-70. 

CHAPTER X. 

Reading and Mental Cultivation 71 

Relation of reading to guidance studies, 71, 72; to disciplinary 
studies, 72, 73; to culture studies, 73, 74; to general literature, 
74r-77 ; Mr. Lowell and Professor Norton quoted, note^ 77, 78. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Requisites for Reading 79 

The threefold preparation, 79 ; attention to be paid to cacli re- 
quirement, 80 ; Professor Blackio on our original knowledge, 80, 



f 



CONTENTS. xxiii 

PAGE 

81 ; apperception, 81, 82 ; the reader to have one life with the au- 
thor, 82-85 ; value to the child of acquaintance with Nature, 85. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Teaching Reading as an Art 86 

The symbolism of the printed page, 86, 87 ; the vocal values of the 
symbols, 87, 88 ; significance of the symbols, 88-90 ; reading not 
at first a source of new ideas, 90, 91 ; rules, 92 ; Professors Dowden 
and Corson on reading aloud quoted, 92, 93 ; Mr. George Ticknor 
quoted, 7iote^ 93. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Teaching Reading as Thought 94 

First teaching of reading an homogeneous exercise, 94, 95 ; the 
work begins to difierentiate, 95 ; the reading lesson, 95, 96 ; the pu- 
pil's study of the lesson, 96 ; the teacher to study with the class, 97 ; 
reading lessons to be connected with other sources of cultivation, 
98 ; the study of definitions, 98-101 ; testing pupils, 101-103 ; re- 
marks on school readers and the child's reading matter, 103-106 ; 
freedom and criticism, 106, 107 ; illustrative lessons, 108-111. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Teaching Composition 112 

The old regime, 112; definition of composition and its relations, 
113, 114 ; difficulty of the art, 114 ; natural gifts and practice, 115, 
116 ; practical suggestions for the teacher : training in language 
lessons, pupil's interest to be enlisted, choice of a subject, the 
teacher to choose and assign subjects, the teacher to instruct in 
the modus of composition, making outlines, rules, and criticisms, 
117-124 ; relation of thought material to thought expression, 124, 
125 ; the intensive plan, 125, 126 ; Dr. Franklin's style and the 
value of the art of composition, 126, 127. 

CHAPTER XV. 
Teaching English Literature .128 

The object or aim to be held in view, 128 ; Mr. Quick's definition 
of literature, 128, 129 ; the two aspects of literature, substance and 
art, to be held together, 130, 131 ; subordinate aspects, 131 ; false 
ideals, 132-134 ; Mr. Hudson's model, 134, 135 ; the subordination 



xxiv CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

of grammar, philology, etc., to literary elements, 136 ; discursive 
study and intensive study to be combined, 136, 137 ; literature 
and recitations, 137, 138 ; literature and examinations, 138, 139 ; 
haste in education, 139 ; history of literature, 140 ; teachers some- 
times too ambitious, 141 ; why literature should be taught in the 
schools, 141, 142. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Function of English Grammar ..... 147 

Ancient definition of grammar, 147, 148 ; Murray's and Kirkham's 
Grammars, 149 ; traditionary view of grammar false, 150 ; gram- 
mar a science, 151, 152 ; causes that broke down the authority of 
the scholastic grammar, 153-155 ; reasons for studying grammar : 
confers knowledge of the vernacular, 156 ; has disciplinary value, 
166-158; is the logic of speech, 159 ; influences practice through 
mental activity, 160 ; relation of study of grammar to use of the 
vernacular, 161-165 ; practical suggestions for teachers, 165-167 ; 
illustrative exercise, 168-170. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Function of Rhetoric 171 

Definitions quoted, 171-173 ; rhetoric a threefold study, 174 ; has 
disciplinary value, 175 ; has culture value, 176 ; rules of rhetoric 
of two kinds, mechanical and psychological, 177 ; rules for punc- 
tuating and capitalizing, 178 ; psychological rules, 176-180 ; Her- 
bert Spencer's Essay on The Philosophy of Style quoted, 180, 
181 ; Professor Minto quoted, 182 ; rhetoric in the high school, 
183, 184. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
The Function of Criticism 185 

Criticism a practical art, 185 ; causes of the difficulty of the sub- 
ject, 185-188 ; the problem involves the harmonizing of criticism 
and freedom, 188, 189 ; practical suggestions : early criticism must 
rest on authority, 189 ; must be repeated, 189 ; must be conducted 
with reference to child's ago and progress, 189, 190 ; teacher not 
to expect too much, 190 ; rules and reasons to be gradually intro- 
duced, 190, 191 ; the spirit of criticism, 191, 192; many exercises 
to pass without review, 192; pupil to play the critic of himself, 
193, 194 ; the " Nature " rules discussed, 194-197. 



CONTENTS. XXV 

CHAPTER XIX. 

PAGE 

Teachers op the Language-Arts 199 

Qualifications of primary teachers, 199, 200 ; the special teacher 
question, 200 ; report of the conference on English quoted, 200, 
201 ; co-operation of teachers and special exercises, 201, 202 ; 
qualifications of the teacher of literature, 202. 

Bibliography 203 



TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE SCOPE OF THE PKESEKT WOKK. 

LiNDLEY Murray spoke in accordance with the tra- 
dition that had been delivered to him when, at the close 
of the last century, he gave this definition : " English 
grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English 
language with propriety." It might at first seem that, 
starting with such a definition, the learned author would 
have given the world a practical rather than a scientific 
book — something like the books on Composition and 
Language Lessons that, in recent years, have poured into 
the schools like a flood. He did nothing of the kind. 
There could hardly be a wider gap between the definition 
of a subject and a treatise devoted to its discussion than 
the gap which lies between Murray's definition and the 
body of his English Grammar. He first declares grammar 
to be pure art or practice, and then treats it as pure science 
or theory. The same inconsistency appears in all the 
writers and teachers of that period. The grammatical 
tradition that these writers and teachers had received, was 
not suffered to influence the practice of the schools of the 
old regime. For example, the teachers devoted a great 
deal of time to parsing. The better pupils became profi- 

1 



2 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

cient in " parting " — that is, classifying — words ; in declin- 
ing, conjugating, and comparing them ; in detecting and 
pointing out " agreement " and " government," and in 
applying rules of syntax which, it is fair to say, they did 
not half the time at all understand. There are many 
persons still living who went through much or all of 
Paradise Lost or the Essay on Man, or perchance The 
Course of Time, in this way. All this, it is almost super- 
fluous to say, was purely theoretical work. The correc- 
tion of false sjmtax, to which much time was given, was 
the only point at which the pupil touched practice at all ; 
and there is great reason to fear that this exercise was 
harmful quite as often as it was beneficial. Beyond this 
little was done in the schools in the broad field of what 
we now call " English " and the " study of English." 
Below the college, grammar reigned supreme. Essay- 
writing was practised in some schools. Besides the exer- 
cises in reading, which were of course important, no at- 
teTition was given to English literature, either in the 
schools or in the colleges. 

It is now generally admitted, at least by competent 
authorities, that the Lindley Murray view of grammar is 
mainly false, and that the subject, taught in the tradi- 
tionary way, has small practical value. No doubt the 
scholastic grammar was of much benefit to many pupils, 
as I shall point out in a future chapter ; but here I must 
sketch the movement of ideas and the changes of school 
practice from the old days of formal grammar down to 
the present time. 

The first real step forward was the introduction into the 
schools of sentence analysis. Parsing now began to fall 
into the background, though by no means as rapidly as 
could have been desired. Professor S. S. Greene con- 
tributed more to this end than any other writer that can 



THE SCOPE OF THE PRESENT WORK. 3 

be named. His books, and especially his Treatise on the 
Structure of the English Language, commonly called 
" Greene's Analysis," exerted an influence upon authors 
and teachers that was both widespread and salutary. He 
had the great merit of giving prominence to synthetic 
or constructive work, limited, however, to sentence-build- 
ing. He was the real author of the most generally ac- 
cepted system of analyzing and classifying English sen- 
tences and their component parts. In the preface of his 
Analysis (1847) Greene enumerated some of " the numer- 
ous advantages arising from studying grammar, or rather 
language, through the structure of sentences " ; but these 
advantages are all of a disciplinary character. In the An- 
alysis he adheres to the old definition of grammar ; but 
in his Introduction to the Study of Grammar (1867) he 
frankly says, " English grammar treats of the principles 
of the English language." 

Professor Greene's books and those modelled after them 
prepared the way for the next step forward. This step 
consisted of what are technically called " Language Les- 
sons," and sometimes merely " Language." These lessons 
are, in fact, nothing but an expansion of the synthetic 
work that has already been mentioned. 

The appearance in the school curriculum of "Eng- 
lish" in the technical sense marks the last movement along 
this line of study. The word means sometimes more and 
sometimes less. In its wide scope it includes language 
lessons, composition, Anglo-Saxon and Old English, for- 
mal and historical grammar, rhetoric, literature, and the 
history of literature. In its narrow scope it is confined 
to composition and literature and closely related subjects. 

In no department of study have the schools recently 
seen more dissatisfaction, more unrest, and more experi- 
ment than in this one. Everytliing is in a flux : authors, 



4: TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

superintendents, and teachers seem to appreciate that 
something bearing the name of English must constitute a 
marked feature of the schools ; but they do not, as classes 
at least, see clearly what it should be, or how it should be 
taught. As a whole, the schools are feeling their way ; 
as a body, teachers are wasting a great deal of their own 
and their pupils' time and energy in efforts more or less 
aimless and misdirected ; and there is little probability 
of the return of that unity and satisfaction which so 
strongly marked the Lindley Murray regime. Two things 
are clear : one is that the old regime can not be brought 
back ; the second is that to teach English successfully re- 
quires a combination of cultivation, taste, judgment, and 
practical skill which is not found in the common teacher 
of the subject. Ability to state with positiveness what an 
ideal course should be, is not necessary to qualify one to 
affirm that, while there are some good teachers and more 
mediocre ones, the major part of the English work done 
in schools at the present time is unsatisfactory. 

Keversing the order of statement, such is the present 
status of English in the schools, and such the steps that 
have led up to it. This account has not been given on 
account of any historical interest or value that it may 
possess, but rather as an introduction to a statement of 
the aims and purposes of the present work. These are as 
follows : — 

1. To state fully and illustrate clearly the principles 
that underlie all practical language culture, whether it 
assumes the form of speech, reading, or composition — 
what I have ventured to call the language-arts. 

2. To emphasize the value of such culture — the edu- 
cation that grows directly out of the use and study of 
the vernacular. 

3. To present to teachers some methods and devices 



THE SCOPE OF THE PRESENT WORK. 5 

that, intelligently followed, will enable them to carry on the 
child's instruction in the language-arts in harmony with 
the underlying principles. These methods and devices 
cover in a general way the whole field up to the college ; 
they even touch the college, and reach far into the field 
of self-cultivation. 

4. To discuss grammar and rhetoric with a double 
purpose : first, to determine wherein their principal edu- 
cational value lies ; and, secondly, to point out their rela- 
tions to the language-arts. The teaching of literature 
and the functions of criticism in the language-arts will 
also receive merited attention. The order of this analy- 
sis will not in all cases be strictly followed. 



CHAPTEE 11. 

THE LANGUAGE-ARTS DEFINED. 

Before we can intelligently consider the special sub- 
ject of this chapter, we must form clear ideas of science 
and art and their primal relation. 

Science is knowledge and art is skill ; or, more fully, 
science is organized knowledge, while art is educated skill. 
The same ideas are expressed by the terms " theory " and 
" practice." This is the fundamental distinction. Here 
art is actual skill, practice, or doing. But art has a sec- 
ond meaning ; it signifies also a body of rules or precepts 
that guide skill, practice, or doing. This is the sense of 
art in the statement that science teaches us to know and 
art to do ; or in the statement that the two differ as the 
indicative mode differs from the imperative, the first mak- 
ing declarations, the second issuing commands. This is 
the sense in which art is used in the familiar title, " The 
Art of Teaching." Practice conveys the same idea in 
the titles, " The Theory and Practice of Teaching," " The 
Theory and Practice of Medicine." The radical relation 
of the two elements is perfectly obvious : the science or 
theory of the book or course of lectures consists of the 
facts and principles advanced ; the art or practice is com- 
posed of the rules and methods. To grasp this duality of 
art, practice and rules to guide practice, is most impor- 
tant The second is the conscious or reflective side of art. 

6 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS DEFINED. 7 

The matters that are immediately pursued and taught 
in schools are commonly called " studies " and " subjects." 
While this usage is so well settled that there is little 
probability of its being changed, it is at the same time 
misleading in classification and mischievous in results, as 
can easily be made to appear. 

In some school work the fundamental activity is doing 
or practice ; in other work, learning or knowing. In the 
first case, the end is skill or practical power ; in the sec- 
ond case, knowledge or intellectual power. The distinc- 
tion is the same as that between art and science, practice 
and theory. The relation of the two is an intimate one. 
Knowledge leads to doing, and doing to knowing. 

To separate the school arts from the school studies or 
subjects proper, it is only necessary to ask : " Which is the 
predominant activity, doing or knowing ? " " Which the 
predominant end, skill or intelligence ? " Touched by 
this question, speech, reading, writing, composition, the 
elements of arithmetic, drawing, manual training, and 
music declare themselves to belong to the one class ; 
geography, history, grammar, literature, mathematics, 
and the sciences to the other. On the one side we have 
tools or instruments, on the other branches or divisions 
of knowledge. The principal of these arts or tools are 
speech, reading, and writing, and they constitute the sub- 
ject-matter of this book. The others may be characterized 
in general, and then be dismissed once for all. 

Most of the elementary school arts involve reading and 
writing of some kind. Arithmetical notation is a species 
of writing, numeration of reading. The other elements 
of arithmetic — addition, subtraction, multiplication, and 
division — are mere processes or methods of computation. 
They are as much arts as the abacus, or the contrivances 
used in calculation by the Chinese. All these elements — 



8 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

the so-called fundamental rules — belong equally to the 
other branches of mathematics ; but they are first acquired 
in connection with number or arithmetic, and they deter- 
mine its practical character. Drawing is a form of writ- 
ing. A draftsman makes a working drawing of a machine ; 
a workman reads it and follows its directions. Manual 
training and music are confessedly arts ; and, in general, 
it may be said that all systems of symbolism and nomen- 
clature, all notations, signs, and alphabets, are mere tools, 
appliances, arts ; they are not taught or studied as ends, 
but as means ; they are put in the elementary school be- 
cause they are essential to its real work, as well as to 
the work of life, and they give to it its predominant 
character. 

Now we return to language. Vocal expression is in- 
stinctive, but speech is an art. The human infant spon- 
taneously expresses himself in sounds, noises, cries of 
various kinds, but he does not spontaneously speak the 
German, the English, or the French language, or even 
any savage dialect of the desert or forest. As we shall 
see hereafter, it is imitation that transforms the infant's 
instinctive utterance into language. Perhaps oral speech 
is not commonly counted among the arts ; but we virtually 
acknowledge that it is so when we speak of "the art 
of conversation " and of " the art of public speaking," 
for these forms of speech do not differ from common 
speech in kind. Moreover, speech is an art that is cul- 
tivated, or at least should be cultivated, in the school. 
Reading is a means of study and not a study itself. It 
discloses the contents of the printed page. It is skill for 
the completion of a work. It is an instrument of acquire- 
ment, and can be used with power and case only through 
much practice. Writing is a means of record and impar- 
tation. It produces the printed page. It is the correla- 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS DEFINED. 9 

tive of reading, originating at the same time, and has long 
been known as the art preservative of arts. Composition 
is to the mind what writing is to the hand or speech to 
the vocal organs ; it is the production and arrangement 
of ideas, as writing is of characters and speech of sounds ; 
or, if composition is held to include expression, as prop- 
erly it does, then it is a doable art, including the arrange- 
ment of ideas and their expression in words. 

We must not overlook the fact that the language-arts 
present the two phases that belong to the arts in general. 
They may be considered as practical skill for the accom- 
plishment of some work, or as codes of rules creating 
and guiding skill. The child reads, writes, etc. ; there 
are also rules for reading and writing. The relation of 
the pupil and of the teacher to these rules is a subject 
that will claim much of our attention at a more advanced 
staofe of our discussion ; here it suffices to say that read- 
ing as practical skill and reading as a code of rules are 
two very different things. The child goes to school to 
acquire the skill, and the rules are of practical value only 
in so far as they contribute to that end. It should also be 
observed that the two are by no means inseparable. A 
person may read well, and not be able to give any rules ; 
he may also give rules in abundance, and not be able to 
read well, or even at all. 

Nor must we overlook the fact that the language-arts, 
like the other school arts, are more or less connected with 
certain sciences. The art of music leans upon the science 
of music ; drawing and manual training depend upon 
physics and mathematics ; the principles of composition 
are found in grammar and rhetoric ; while reading and 
writing go back to physiology and psychology. 

It is not impertinent to remark that we are here deal- 
ing with reading and the other arts of the elementary 



10 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

school as they are carried on in the school, and not as 
they are treated in books or lectures. If they are made 
the subject of scientific investigation ; if they are treated 
reflectively ; if rules, methods, facts, and laws occupy at- 
tention to the exclusion of skill on practice, then they 
become studies or subjects as a matter of course. But 
this is not the way in which they present themselves to 
the child holding in his hand his primer or his copybook. 
Two additional observations may be offered. The first 
is that if reading, writing, and composition, as found in 
the schools, are studies at all, they are studies of a peculiar 
character. Little discrimination is needed to separate 
them from formal studies like grammar and rhetoric, or 
from real studies like mathematics and science. They do 
not become studies until they are subjected to scientific 
method ; that is, until they are made the subject-matter 
of discussion and formal treatment. It is true that they all 
give the pupil some discipline, and that they all add some- 
thing to his store of knowledge ; but these are minor facts 
that do not determine their classification. At most, in the 
school they are tools or instrumental studies. The second 
observation is that if the distinction between the school 
arts and the school studies be pronounced unimportant, 
two answers may be made. Classification should rest on 
facts — should be scientific. Then the present designation 
of these arts as studies leads the teacher, or at all events 
tends to lead the teacher, to misplace the emphasis and to 
adopt a false method. If reading, for example, is regard- 
ed as a study or subject, rather than an art, the teacher is 
tempted to place rules or method above power to execute, 
and above the practice which alone can produce such 
power. Still more is this the tendency in teaching com- 
position. Never, until the idea that composition is a 
*' study " to be learned from a book is banished from the 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS DEFINED. H 

school, will children be taught to write properly. Among 
the severest criticisms made upon the common school are 
these : " The reading and spelling are poor," " The me- 
chanical work in arithmetic is laborious and inaccurate," 
" The composition is bad " ; and these are faults that can be 
corrected only through practice. There can be no greater 
mistake in relation to the first stages of school education 
than that the rationale of a process is immediately valu- 
able. A painter or musician knows his technical rules 
and his science, but neither his technical rules nor his 
science can take the place of technique or execution. It 
is by no means always true that a mathematician is " good 
in figures " ; on the other hand, he is often poor. It is 
therefore extremely important that the teacher should 
clearly see whether the end to which a school exercise 
looks is skill or knowledge — practical power or intel- 
lectual power. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE YERKACULAK AS AK EDUCATIONAL INSTRUMENT. 

The first view that men take of language, and the 
only one that most of them ever take, is the practical 
view. Language is a tool to be used in the commerce of 
life. Through it we receive the thought and feeling of 
our fellows, and convey our own thought and feeling to 
them in turn. The field of this peculiar commerce is so 
extensive that it gives rise to the three greatest arts — 
speech, reading, and writing. These pages abound in 
remarks on the value of these arts and their place in edu- 
cation. In the present chapter it is proposed to take a 
broader and more fundamental view of the subject. This 
is the more necessary, because a large majority of men, 
and even of teachers, never look beyond the immediate 
or practical uses of this great instrument of human in- 
tercourse to discover its further value. 

The relation of language and the mind has furnished 
men of speculative habit some of the most interesting and 
difficult questions with which they have grappled. One 
of these questions, and perhaps the most fascinating of all, 
is whether general names denote real existence or only 
subjective existence — the old contention of the Nominal- 
ists and the Realists. Another and perhaps a more practi- 
cal one is whether language and thought are inseparable. 
It is a tradition of the schools that without articulate 

12 



THE VERNACULAR. 13 

speech there is, and there can be, no real mental activity, 
at least no thinking. This tradition, inveterate as it 
is, is certainly untrue. The existence of human intelli- 
gence, independent of language, can be conclusively es- 
tablished.* It by no means follows, however, that the 
human intelligence can be fully developed, or even far 
developed, without language. On the other hand, mental 
growth can never advance beyond a certain rudimentary 

* Prof. Preyer, who is perhaps the highest authority on the sub- 
ject, gives us the demonstration (see Mental Development in the 
Child). Preyer remarks, what indeed any intelligent observer can 
see for himself, that the child learns to make the discrimination of 
warm and wet, damp and cool, dry and warm, dry and cold, rough 
and hard, soft and smooth, heavy and light, at a time when as yet 
he gives no hint whatever in the direction of naming his feelings in 
words of articulate speech (page 30). He remarks too that deaf and 
dumb children in the first months do not differ essentially from 
normal children (page 31). Children born completely deaf have, 
" through the senses of sight and touch, a large number of ideas, 
and they often have a remarkable understanding " (page 88). The 
first time that a child with a spoon in his right hand strikes the 
table, notices the sound, and then, shifting the spoon to the other 
hand, repeats the experiment, he gives a sign of intellect that seeks 
for causes (page 85). Forest children that have been rescued from 
their imbrutement, and have learned to talk, have shown a mental 
development superior to the animals about them, and have turned 
to practical account in their new life what they had learned in the 
wilderness (pages 90-93). Again, the general conclusion is strength- 
ened by analogous facts observed in the study of animals, in the 
fields and woods, in zoological gardens, and in the aquarium (page 
84). Still, further, ideas are before words, and therefore before 
talking (page 89). Thinking, in the proper sense of the term, can 
not be taught to any one through verbal instruction. No child is 
at first instructed in thinking, but every child learns of himself to 
think as much as he learns to see and hear (page 69). In the child 
no special activity of intellect is proved by a special aptitude for 
acquiring words, but sometimes the contrary (page 94). 



14 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-AE,TS. 

stage unless the child is in possession of an adequate 
means of expression. This is not denied. Furthermore, 
adequate means of expression implies a verbal language. 
Facial expression, looks, signs, gestures, pictures, and 
symbols do not suffice. The truth is, that we early learn 
to carry on our thinking in words ; that in real human 
life thought and language are practically inseparable, and 
that neither one can be understood, or be intelligently 
discussed, without constant reference to the other. We 
may call intelligence the master of speech, but the serv- 
ant is indispensable to the master.* Sir William Ham- 
ilton has appositely said that language is the godmother 
of knowledge. " Language is to the mind precisely what 
the arch is to the tunnel," he says ; " the power of 
thinking and the power of excavation are not dependent 
on the word in one case, or on the mason work in the 
other; but without these subsidiaries, neither process 
could be carried beyond its rudimentary commence- 
ment." f We must, however, make this almost inse23a- 
rable relation the subject of a closer investigation. 

'Not only have writers on psychology, logic, and philol- 
ogy discussed the genetic relation of thought and speech, 

* This fact Preyer also distinctly recognises. The history of im- 
bruted children furnishes " the proof of the indispensableness of the 
learning of language for the attainment of full intellectual activity 
and the development of feeling by means of learning to speak in 
the first years of life; for they have almost all lost the ability to 
frame thoughts that go beyond the immediate surroundings, and 
to rise to higher concepts — to the highest reason." That the 
*' capacity which first lends to human life its true worth is only 
possible through the learning of language — and in fact of verbal 
language, not picture language or sign language, or any other 
means of understanding — nobody denies." — Mental Development in 
the Child, p. 94. 

f Logic, lecture viii. 



THE VERNACULAR. 15 

but liistorians have marked the correspondence of their 
respective development. " Language lies at the root of all 
mental cultivation." So says the great historian of Rome, 
Dr. Theodor Mommsen ; and no one has a better right to 
say so than he, unless it may be an equally eminent his- 
torian of Greece. The great languages of the world are 
no accidents; they are not found here and there at 
random, but belong to the great peoples. The thought, 
the imagination, the feeling of Greece could not have 
existed separate and apart from the Greek language. 
The force of character, the will, and the action of Eome 
were insejoarably bound up with the Roman tongue. We 
can not think of the contributions that these two nations 
made to civilization as emanating from peoples who used 
feeble or meagre languages. But this is not all : not only 
must a great people live in a great language, but its lan- 
guage must be suited to its genius and life. Latin could 
not have been the language of Greece, nor Greek the 
language of Rome ; and still less could Hebrew have been 
the language of either. An Englishman can not grow up 
in the French language, or a Frenchman in the English 
language. Hebrew expresses the deep spiritual concep- 
tions of Judea ; Greek, the profound and subtle philo- 
sophical and sesthetical ideas of Greece ; Latin, the practi- 
cal aims of Rome. German fits the Germans, French the 
French, English the English ; and were the young of the 
three nations changed at birth a transformation of in- 
herited character would immediately begin. We need 
not inquire more curiously into the relation existing be- 
tween national character and language ; it suffices us to 
know that the interaction between the two is constant 
and powerful. In a way, the national language is the 
best metre of the national genius and character. 

As with the nation, so with the individual. A great 



16 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

man can not live in a small or a barren language ; and if 
he is compelled to make use of one that is below his pur- 
pose, as Dante in writing the Divina Commedia, Jerome 
in translating the Bible into Latin,* or Luther in trans- 
lating it into German, he expands it and raises it to his 
own level by forcing into it new content, and so giving it 
a new rank in the world. But even so much as this he 
can not do unless the material is ready to his hand. Em- 
erson tells us that a man's power to connect his thought 
with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the 
simplicity of his character — " that is, his love of truth, 
and his desire to communicate it without loss " ; that 
" the corruption of man is followed by the corruption of 
language " ; and that " picturesque language is at once a 
commanding certificate that he who employs it is a man 
in alliance with truth and God." f But this is only one 
side of the shield ; Lowell gives us the other side. " The 
material of thought," says he, " reacts upon the thought 
itself. Shakespeare himself would have been common- 
place had he been paddocked in a thinly shaven vocabulary, 
and Phidias, had he worked in wax, only a more improved 
Mrs. Jarley." | Then a man's speech reflects not merely 
his moods, as of thoughtfulness or passion, but also his 
whole mental life. Thus language becomes, and particu- 
larly unpremeditated language, a measure of the man. 
All in all, it is a better metre of his cultivation than his 
manners. The dialect that the disciples of Jesus spoke 
" betrayed " much more than that they were Galileans. 
The correspondence is perfect between the mind of Mil- 

* See Dean Milman on Jerome's Bible, Latin Christianity, vol. 
i, p. 2. 

f Nature, chap. iv. 

X Books and Libraries, in Literary and Political Addresses. 



THE VERNACULAR. 17 

ton, as erudite as poetic, and his diction ; while Shake- 
speare is no more masterful in thought, delineation, and 
fancy than in vocabulary. 

" What is that," asks Coleridge, " which first strikes 
us, and strikes us at once, in a man of education, and 
which, among educated men, so instantly distinguishes 
the man of superior mind, that (as was observed with 
eminent propriety of the late Edmund Burke) we can 
not stand under the same archway during a shower of 
rain without finding him out ? Isot the weight or novelty 
of his remarks ; not any unusual interest of facts com- 
municated by him, etc. ... It is the unpremeditated and 
evidently habitual arrangement of his words, grounded on 
the habit of foreseeing, in each integral part, or (more 
plainly) in every sentence, the whole that he intends to 
communicate. However irregular and desultory his talk, 
there is method in the fragments." * 

What has been said relates to vernacular languages. 
The word is derived from ver?iaculus, which comes 
again from verna, a slave born in his master's house ; 
and it means the speech to which one is born and in 
which he is reared— the patrius sermo of the Roman, 
the flutter Spraclie of the German, the mother tongue of 
the Englishman. Command of a noble vernacular in- 
volves the most valuable discipline and culture that a 
man is capable of receiving. It conditions all other dis- 
cipline and culture. Reference is not now made to its 
scientific study, to its history and philology, its lexical 
and grammatical elements ; what is meant rather is the 
man's growing up in the language, so to speak, and using 
it for all the purposes of his mental life. The greatest 
mental inheritance to which a German, a Frenchman, or 

* The Friend, section ii, Essay iv. 



18 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

an Englishman is born is his native tongue, rich in the 
knowledge and wisdom, the ideas and thoughts, the wit 
and fancy, the sentiment and feeling, of a thousand years. 
Nay, of more than a thousand years ; for these languages 
in their modern forms were enriched by still earlier cen- 
turies. To come back to the old thought, such a speech 
as one of these only flows out from such a life as it 
expresses, and is in turn essential to the existence of 
that life. 

A man's lack of a cultivated language means one of 
two things : either that his mental and moral life must 
be confined and repressed, or that he must go abroad 
in quest of what he can not find at home. The deepest 
significance of the Renaissance is disclosed by the fact 
that, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the minds 
of men had awakened to the barrenness of the mental 
waste about them ; that they craved thought, sentiment, 
and beauty, of which their own tongues were destitute ; 
and that they resorted to the Greek and Latin classics, 
which were at that time practically restored to the world. 
The weakest side of the Renaissance as an intellectual 
movement was, that it could not in any case be really na- 
tional. Scholars might be developed and sustained on the 
old literatures, but not the people. However it may be 
with epicures, the common man can not subsist on exotic 
fruits. There is no example in history of a powerful na- 
tional mental and moral life, unless it grows out of a ver- 
nacular culture and is supported by it. Witness the Jews, 
the Greeks, and the Romans. 

What has been said leads up to our main topic. This is, 
the vernacular as an instrument of education. A learned 
Scotch writer contends that the study of the vernacular 
" is, and must always be, the supreme object in the educa- 
tion of a human being, the centre around which all other 



THE VERNACULAR. 19 

educational agencies ought to arrange themselves in due 
subordination." The one argument that he presses, some- 
what abridged, runs as follows : 

Mind grows only in so far as it finds expression for 
itself ; and this it can not find in a foreign tongue. It is 
round the language learned at the mother's knee that the 
whole life of feeling, emotion, and thought gathers. If 
it were possible for a child or boy to live in two languages 
at once equally well, so much the worse ; his intellectual 
and spiritual growth would not be doubled but halved. 
Unity of mind and of character would have great difficulty 
in asserting itself. Language is at best only symbolic of 
the world of consciousness, and nearly every word is rich 
in unexpressed associations of life-experience, which gives 
it its full value for the life of mind. Subtilties, delicacies, 
and refinements of feeling and perception are only indi- 
cated by words ; the rest lies deep in our conscious or un- 
conscious life, and is the source of the tone and colour of 
language. Words, accordingly, must be steeped in life to 
be living ; and as we have not two lives, but only one, so 
we have only one language. To the mother tongue, then, 
all other languages we acquire are merely subsidiary ; and 
their chief value in the education of youth is that they 
help to bring into relief for us the character of our own 
language as a logical medium of thinking, or help us to 
understand it as thought, or to feel it as literary art.* 

An able American scholar, profoundly realizing the 
dependence of solid cultivation upon the national tongue, 
forcibly argues that this dependence must find larger 
recognition in our scheme of education. The following 
is also somewhat abridged : 

* Prof. S. S. Laurie : Lectures on Language and Linguistic 
Method in the School, pp. 18, 19, second edition. 



20 TEACHING THE LAKGUAGE-ARTS. 

Education, he contends, is more than mental dis- 
cipline ; it is a process of nutrition. Mind grows by what 
it feeds on, and, like the body, must have suitable and 
appropriate nourishment. Intellect is only one function 
of the mind ; feeling and volition are co-present and co- 
essential. A7id these three are one mind. The pre-emi- 
nence of literature as educative material is due to the fact 
that, coming as poetry especially does from the intellectual 
and emotional depths of creative genius, it awakens, nour- 
ishes, and calls into activity the corresponding potencies 
of those who are touched by its influence. Then language 
is the sole universal in the life of man. Language and 
literature are more than liberalizing, they are humanizing 
studies. Through the humanity in them we realize our 
own individual human capacities. The language and lit- 
erature that best serve this end are our own. Consequent- 
ly, the vernacular is the beginning and the end of a liberal 
education. The Greeks, to whom we owe our ideal of 
culture, knew no language but their own ; but the minds 
of Greek schoolboys were steeped in their own noble liter- 
ature. For our youth the essential and indispensable ele- 
ment in a generous culture is the English language and 
literature. But the best results in the teaching of English 
in high schools can not be secured without the aid given 
by the study of some other language, which, in the opin- 
ion of all experts, should be Latin or a modern tongue. 
This re-enforces the humanistic starting-point, which is 
of the utmost importance. From the vernacular as a cen- 
tre the entire scheme of secondary education must be, and 
in due time will be, evolved.* 

* Dr. J. G. Schurman : The School Review, vol. ii., pp. 93, 94. 



CHAPTER lY. 

THE WORK OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 

Whej^ a child first reaches the schoolhouse, say at 
the age of six years, he has already acquired two invalu- 
able mental possessions. These are : — 

1. A store of facts, ideas, and images — that is, of 
knowledge ; or, to speak in terms of power rather than 
of attainment, the child has reached a certain stage of 
mental growth or expansion ; he has a certain procreative 
mental power. 

2. A store of language capable of expressing measur- 
ably these ideas, facts, and images ; or, to adopt the other 
form of expression, the child is able to clothe the children 
of his mind in an appropriate garb of speech. 

These two facts stand in a certain relation to each 
other ; they are in a sense only aspects of one and the 
same fact, as was stated in general terms in the last 
chapter. As a rule, however, mental power is in excess of 
linguistic power. Professor Preyer declares that " the 
newborn human being brings with him into the world far 
more intellect than talent for language," * and it is prob- 
able that, as a rule, intellect maintains this primitive ad- 
vantage. Just as the child's physical strength is in ex- 
cess of his power to walk until he has found his legs, so 
his intellectual strength is in excess of his power to talk 

* The Development of the Intellect, p. 33. 
4 21 



22 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

until he has found his tongue. Both walking and talk- 
ing are habits or arts to be acquired. While it is true, 
as the writer just quoted says, that it was not language 
which generated the intellect, but rather the intellect 
which invented speech, it is still true that practically the 
two elements are inseparably connected, and thus either 
element may be roughly measured in .terms of the 
other. 

The two main facts now stated are the roots from 
which the child's school culture is to spring. The teacher, 
as she meets the new pupil at the schoolroom door, 
faces therefore a twofold work. 

1. She must strive to enlarge and clarify the child's 
mental store, rendering his ideas, facts, and thoughts 
more precise and definite, as well as more full and varied. 
She is to enlarge the quantity and improve the quality of 
what the child knows ; or, to speak in terms of power 
again, she is to stimulate and direct the growth or ex- 
pansion of his mind. Under this head the teaching of 
all studies, or subjects proper, falls, no matter what their 
names or character. 

2. She must put him in possession of the elementary 
school arts, as previously explained — what are sometimes 
called the instrumental studies. In particular — and for 
our purpose this is the main point — she must strive to 
enlarge and improve his language ; enlarge it by expand- 
ing his vocabulary, improve it by rendering his use of 
language more clear and definite. This requirement will 
include not merely oral speech, but also reading and com- 
position, or all the language-arts. Professor Laurie says 
our business as educators is to give to the child's " words 
definite and clear significations, and to help the child in 
adding to his stock ; for, in adding to his stock of under- 
stood words, we add to his stock of understood things, 



THE WOKK OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. 23 

and, consequently, to his material for thought and the 
growth of the fabric of his mind."* 

The earnest teacher who assays this two-sided task is 
at once confronted by the question of method. Under 
either head she asks, " Where shall I begin? " and " How 
shall I proceed ? " These questions she can not intelli- 
gently answer until she has carefully studied the child's 
previous mental life. Entering upon such study, she en- 
counters new questions, viz., " How has the child acquired 
the knowledge that he possesses already ? " and " How has 
he learned the language that he habitually uses in the ex- 
pression of his thought and feeling ? " The answers to 
these questions will determine in a general way, for the 
time being, the method of the school ; for the very obvi- 
ous reason that, unless the school preserves the essential 
continuity of the child's mental life, it will fail to ac- 
complish its object. As the child has been learning, 
whether knowledge or language, so in the main must he 
continue to learn. This is the method of Nature. Answers 
to our two questions will furnish matter for the two en- 
suing chapters. First, however, an additional observation. 

Closely connected as thought and language are, either 
one may be developed somewhat in disproportion to the 
other. This fact is popularly recognised in such expres- 
sions as that " A knows niore than he can tell," while 
" B can tell more than he knows." The wise teacher will 
not fall into the very common mistake of neglecting 
either of the two elements. Good teaching of subject- 
matter enlarges the use of language, and good teaching 
of language enlarges subject-matter. In teaching read- 
ing a mistake has sometimes been made. Two little at- 
tention has been paid to thought-material and too much 

* Page 29. 



24 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

attention to words and expression. At the present time 
there is, in some quarters, a tendency to slight the arts of 
expression and, relatively, to exaggerate thought-material. 
In the unfolding of the mind intellect precedes language, 
as we have seen ; but language reacts upon intellect to 
such an extent that its large cultivation is essential to 
large mental growth. To cultivate expression is to cul- 
tivate mind. In the elementary school the two Hues of 
w^ork should be co-ordinate. To neglect either is to go 
counter to the teachings of psychology, and to court fail- 
ure in the end. 

Note. — Prof. Laurie, in the first edition of his Lectures on Lan- 
guage and Linguistic Method in the School (page 23). after re-, 
marking that the child's range of language up to the eighth year is 
very small, said that he was probably confined to not more than 
150 words. In the second edition (page 28) he makes the number not 
more than 200 or 300 words. Even the second number is no doubt 
too small. Mr. Albert Salisbury, of the State Normal School, 
Whitewater, Wisconsin, reports a child that at the age of thirty-two 
months had by actual count a vocabulary of 642 words, and at the 
age of five and a half years a vocabulary of 1,529 words. The 
two vocabularies are as follows at the two periods, distributed with 
reference to parts of speech : Nouns, 350 and 885 ; pronouns, 24 and 
22; verbs, 150 and 321; adjectives, 60 and 236; adverbs, 32 and 40; 
prepositions, 17 and 20; conjunctions, 4 and 5; interjections, 5 and 
1 ; participles and inflected forms in general except pronouns were 
not counted. " It will be observed," says Mr. Salisbury, " that, with 
an apparent shrinkage in his use of pronouns and interjections, there 
was an immense increase in his use of nouns and adjectives, verbs 
coming third in the order of the increase." Of the second list he 
says, further, that it was composed of words not merely understood, 
but of words actually and spontaneously used by the child, and 
that it certainly underestimated his working vocabulary. — (Educa- 
tional Review, March, 1894, pp. 289, 290.) 

Prof. Max Miiller states, on the authority of an English coun- 
try clergyman, that some of the labourers in his parish had not 
800 words in their vocabulary; that the vocabulary of the ancient 



THE WORK OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 25 

sages of Egypt, as far as it is known from the hieroglyphic inscrip- 
tions, amounts to about 685 words ; that the libretto of an Italian 
opera seldom displays a greater variety ; that a well-educated per- 
son in England, who has been at a public school and at the uni- 
versity, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the Times, and all the 
books of Mudie's Library, seldom uses more than about 3,000 or 
4,000 words in actual conversation ; that accurate thinkers and 
close reasoners, who wait until they find the word that exactly fits 
their meaning, employ a larger stock ; and that eloquent speakers 
may rise to a command of 10,000. " Shakespeare, who displayed a 
greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any lan- 
guage, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words. Milton's 
works are built up with 8,000 ; and the Old Testament says all that 
it has to say with 5,642 words." — (The Science of Language, pp. 266, 
267.) " But a contributor to Cassell's Saturday Journal," says the 
London Daily News, " has been at considerable pains to check these 
(Miiller's) theories, and the conclusion that he arrives at is that the 
figures given are too small. Farm hands, he finds, are able to name 
all the common objects of the farm, and to do this involves the use 
of more than the entire number of 300 words allotted to them. 
Then, by going through a dictionary, and excluding compound 
words or words not in pretty constant use, he found that there were 
under the letter ' s ' alone 1,018 words that are to be found in ordi- 
nary people's vocabulary. It would be nearer the truth, we are 
told, to say that the agricultural labourer uses 1,500 more, and that 
intelligent farm hands and artisans command 4,000 words, while 
educated people have at call from 8,000 to 10,000. Journalists are 
credited with 12,000." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ORIGIiq" OF THE CHILD's KN'OWLEDGE. 

With all their divergencies of view, the psychologists 
are happily agreed on the one fundamental question of 
the origin and nature of our earliest knowledge. Let us 
run over the principal facts that are to be considered in 
studying that subject. 

The first of these facts is the mind. The mind is 
capable of activity, of self-activity, and this is its char- 
acteristic attribute ; through activity it grows, increases, 
enlarges ; furthermore, while the mind is one and has no 
parts, it is capable of acting in several different spheres, 
or of having a variety of experiences, and, through these 
activities and experiences, its powers or faculties are de- 
veloped. This enlargement or increase of the mind we 
name education. Still another fact in relation to the 
mind is that it grows only through its own activity. Once 
more, the mind can not act, and so can not enlarge or be- 
come educated, if it is left isolated. Its primal activity 
is dependent absolutely upon something external to itself. 
Accordingly, the second fundamental fact in knowing 
is some object or tiling other than mind. In general 
we may call this. Nature. It is Nature that first sets the 
mind in motion, and so incites its growth or education ; 
it is Nature that first stimulates us to know, to feel, and 
to choose. Afterward the mind's own states and affec- 

2G 



THE ORIGIN OP THE CHILD'S KNOWLEDGE. 27 

tions act in the same way ; but this conies only in the 
period of introspection or self-consciousness, and does not 
lie within the scope of the present survey. But, thirdly, 
Nature and the mind must be in relation one to the other. 
Until real contact is established, there is no mental ac- 
tivity and so no knowledge or education ; but the mo- 
ment it is established activity begins, and knowledge and 
education take their rise. Knowledge is, in fact, nothing 
but a relation between the knowing power and the known 
object. Properly speaking, it has no existence outside of 
the mind ; it is a continuing state of mind ; that is, if 
minds should cease to know, knowledge would cease to 
exist. We do indeed assign to knowledge an objective 
existence, as when we speak of the knowledge that is stored 
up in books and libraries. With that phase of the sub- 
ject we shall deal hereafter ; here it is sufficient to say 
that what books and libraries do really contain is the sym- 
bols of knowledge — mere transcripts or copies ot the 
world or of the mind as the authors of books have seen 
the. world and mind — and that they are meaningless until 
they are converted into reality by the reader's own ac- 
tivity. Letters and books to a child, or to an illiterate 
person, are nothing but things, like stocks and stones. 

The education of the human race began with the es- 
tablishment of contact between mind on the one side and 
the facts of Nature and of society on the other. The di- 
rect contact of mind with mind is also involved. This 
primal knowledge and discipline was soon re-enforced 
from another source. As soon as men began to observe, 
to think, and remember — that is, to accumulate expe- 
rience — they began to impart what they had learned to 
one another. They began to communicate. Parents in 
particular communicated to their children. In the 
primal sense of the word that was the beginning, not 



28 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

strictly of education, but of teaching. One generation 
told what it knew to the generation following. Thus 
arose tradition, the oral delivery from man to man and 
from age to age of a store of accumulated experience ; 
tradition, which has exerted, and still exerts, an incalcu- 
lable influence upon the affairs of men. It is a channel of 
communication, a means of teaching. It does not stand 
for first-hand or original knowledge, but for second-hand 
or derivative knowledge ; or, to put the thought in an- 
other form, what one learns in this way he does not know 
through the exercise of his own faculties of observation 
and reflection, but through the exercise of the faculties 
of reception and retention. The establishment of con- 
tact between men's minds and this second form of knowl- 
edge was the second step in the education of the race. 
However, this relation can not be artificial or mechanical, 
but must be real and vital, as before. It is as necessary 
for one to use his mind in order to understand what an- 
other has seen, heard, or thought, as it is to understand 
things at first hand, and often even more necessary. The 
medium of tradition is oral language, assisted by signs 
and gestures ; and this brings us back again, and from a 
new angle, to the relation that exists between language 
and mental cultivation. 

The foregoing survey covers the whole field of race 
education previous to the invention of some kind of 
writing — either pictures, words, or letters. There has 
been some discussion of the question how far the in- 
dividual repeats the history of the race. He certainly 
takes, and in the same order, all the steps that have been 
enumerated. The boy of six years of age has a store of 
ideas that may be grouped as follows : — 

1. Ideas of the natural world about him, or of sense- 
objects. These ideas are simple, particular, concrete, 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CHILD'S KNOWLEDGE. 29 

and have been formed by the familiar processes of sense- 
perception. Furthermore, as children differ in natural 
environment, so they differ in ideas. The mental store 
of the city boy differs from that of the country boy. 

2. Ideas of the social world. These ideas also are 
simple and concrete, formed by sense-perception. They 
are ideas both of persons and of acts, and they are de- 
pendent upon environment, as before. 

These two groups of ideas are the first that the child 
forms, and they condition all his later knowledge. He 
forms them himself, at first hand ; for in this sphere all 
that the parent, nurse, or other person can do for the 
child, at first, is merely to bring facts into relation to 
his senses, which forms a sort of rudimentary teaching. 
In a true sense, therefore, the child is an original investi- 
gator of the world about him, prying into it with all the 
organs at his command. 

3. Abstract or general ideas. These are notions or 
concepts, pale and shadowy indeed, but still the germs of 
all scientific thought. Concept-making is later than per- 
cept-making, but follows close upon it. Here are brought 
into play not merely observation, but analysis, comparison, 
abstraction, and generalization. The child learns the dif- 
ference between " mamma " and " woman," and the use of 
the plural number ; he enters into the sphere of relations 
that distinguish, in simple cases, cause and effect. These 
general ideas relate to the social sphere as well as to Nature ; 
for, notwithstanding their greater abstractness, the normal- 
ly trained child early begins to form the notions conveyed 
by the words "command," "rule," "law," "authority," 
" control," and " government." Although not self-con- 
scious, the normal child, long before he reaches the school- 
house, has learned the use of "I " and " me," or has learned 
to discriminate between himself and the world about him. 



30 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

4. Judgments and inferences. Judgment or compari- 
son is involved in the formation of both percepts and con- 
cepts, and also of inferences. Still, it is proper to men- 
tion them particularly as constituting thinking proper. 
Professor Preyer's boy was twenty- three months old when 
he uttered his first spoken judgment, Heiss — that is, 
" This food is too hot." Add inference to judgment, 
and you have reasoned knowledge. 

In his first thinking, the child uses only the materials 
furnished by perception. The first subject-matter upon 
which he exercises his faculties comes from his own expe- 
rience. His concepts, judgments, and inferences are in 
this respect strictly limited. He can not, in fact, be 
taught to think any more than he can be taught to see, 
to hear, or to smell. All that can be done for him in 
this regard must be indirect. A normal mind, when 
it comes into relation with an appropriate object, per- 
ceives or thinks, just as spontaneously as a normal finger 
smarts when thrust into the flame of a lamp. At first 
the mental processes are not volitional, but automatic; 
afterward, the will appears, and finally assumes definite 
control of the regulated mind. The child is an original 
thinker, as he is an original observer. With slight change 
of words, what Emerson says of Nature is equally true of 
society : " Nature is a discipline of the understanding in 
intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensible objects is 
a constant exercise in the necessary lessons of difierenccj 
of likeness, of order, of being and seeming, of progressive 
arrangement ; of ascent from particular to general ; of 
combination to one end of manifold forces. . . . What 
tedious training, day after day, year after year, never end- 
ing, to form the common sense." * 

* Nature, chap. v. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CHILD'S KNOWLEDGE. 31 

Still, too much emphasis is often placed on the sense- 
elements — at least, in the more advanced stages of educa- 
tion. It is not at all necessary for each man to repeat in 
all particulars the experience of the race. To do so, 
under existing conditions, is, in fact, impossible ; but 
even if it were possible, such a procedure would involve 
great loss of time and energy. The current maxim, 
"Never teach the child anything that he can find out 
himself," contains as much error as truth. In respect to 
many things, Eoger Ascham's observation, "Learning 
teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty," 
is just as true as the converse would be in respect to 
other things. At first, all the elements of knowledge are 
sense-elements, concrete and particular ; on these our ear- 
liest use of language rests, and they form the basis of all 
our knowledge ; but as the child ascends the educational 
ladder, the abstract, the general, and the ideal elements 
will become more and more prominent. 

The present purpose is not to inventory the child's 
ideas on his arrival at the school, but only to classify 
them. To inventory them would be impossible, since his 
knowledge is a variable quantity. His mind already acts 
in every sphere in which it is capable of acting, but with 
different degrees of power. His perceptive knowledge 
far exceeds his reflective knowledge ; the field that he 
has made most thoroughly his own is the material world, 
and after that the social world. The value of what he has 
already acquired can not be overestimated, meagre as it 
may seem ; for this knowledge, through apperception, will 
exercise the profoundest influence upon his whole future 
life. Still further, these first steps in the path of knowl- 
edge are as difficult as they are important. We take these 
steps when we are too young either to appreciate their 
difficulty or to remember them. However, observation of 



32 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

the child-life must convince us that they are the shortest 
as well as the most difficult steps that we ever take in 
the path of knowledge. 

5. But the enumeration of the sources of knowledge 
is not yet complete. The child of six has been brought 
into contact with the stream of tradition as well as with 
Nature and the social world. A parent teaches his child 
through explanations, descriptions, and stories, as well as 
by putting sense-objects and his own conduct or behaviour 
in the child's way. This verbal or secondary knowledge 
the child receives by the help of his primal or original 
knowledge. The ideas, images, and thoughts that he has 
formed by using his mind on real objects interpret to him 
the ideas, images, and thoughts conveyed by words. At 
first a word or sentence is nothing more to him than any 
other sound. Time, or rather experience, makes the word 
or sentence significant, and experience only. The culti- 
vation that comes from Nature and man must precede 
the cultivation that comes from spoken language as well 
as the cultivation that comes from books and literature. 

Here our survey may close; for it will be better to 
deal with the book when the child enters the school- 
house. And still the remark may be added that no at- 
tempt has been made sharply to discriminate time-rela- 
tions in the sequence of the child's knowledge. It is 
enough for the teacher to know that when the child 
reaches the school his knowledge is rapidly increasing 
and his mind growing in all the ways and directions that 
have been enumerated. 



\ 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE OEIGIl^ OF THE CHILD'S LAifGUAGE. 

As previously stated, the second duty of the teacher 
is to enlarge and improve the child's use of language ; 
enlarge it by expanding his vocabulary, and improve it by 
rendering his use of words more clear, definite, and pre- 
cise, l^either of these things can the teacher accom- 
plish without paying good heed to the steps by which the 
child's speech has been formed. For thorough investiga- 
tion of the subject, physiologically and psychologically, 
the reader is referred to the appropriate sources ; an out- 
line only is called for in this place. 

At birth a child has an instinctive vocal utterance, 
which is constantly enlarged by exercise. " There is the 
same spontaneous apprenticeship," says M. Taine, " for 
cries as for movements. The progress of the vocal organs 
goes on just like that of the limbs ; the child learns to 
emit such or such a sound as it learns to turn its head or 
its eyes — that is to say, by gropings and constant at- 
tempts." * The infant's first instinctive utterances are 
purely reflexive, and mean no more than the quiver of a 
nerve or the contraction of a muscle ; of thought, they 
are as devoid as the gurgling of water when it issues from 
the bung of a barrel. Still, these utterances are the raw 

* On the Acquisition of Language by Children, Mind, vol. ii, 
p. 252. 



3i TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

materials of speech, as sense-impressions are the raw ma- 
terials of ideas. Thej are not language save in the 
most indefinite sense, but they are a contribution that 
heredity makes to the formation of language. They are 
correlated with physical states ; thus, a live coal dropped 
on an infant's hand will cause it not only to move its 
hand, but also to cry out. So far the human infant does 
not differ from the brute infant, except that it has a 
greater range of utterance. 

In due time the infant begins to use his voice to ex- 
press mental states. By experience he learns that certain 
sounds which he hears convev meaninsfs, and in the same 
way he learns to make sounds in order to convey his own 
meanings. He signals that he is in pain, or that he is in 
want of food. Slowly but surely vocal utterance becomes 
correlated with perception, judgment, feeling, and desire. 
It is at this stage that the will enters the field of activity. 
" Every expression of thought," says Mr. Tracy, "whether 
it be word or mark or gesture, is the result of an active 
will, and as such may be classed among movements." * 
Still, the first volitional expressions do not appear to be 
significant ; they are mere vocal experiments. By this time 
consonants have been added to vowels, and sounds have 
become articulate. The result at twelve months of ao:e 
in the child whom he observed, M. Taine called " twitter- 
ing." " She takes delight in her twitter like a bird, she 
seems to smile with joy over it, but as yet it is only the 
twittering of a bird, for she attaches no meaning to the 
sounds she utters. She has learned only the materials of 
language." f Even more, the first words that are uttered 
are meaningless ; they are not associated with any object 

* The Psychology of Childhood, p. llo, second edition. 
f Wind, vol. ii, p. 252. 



THE ORIGIX OP THE CHILD'S LANGUAGE. 35 

that marks the advent of j^roper language ; so that the 
child's first word, which is hailed with so much interest 
by fond parents, brothers, and sisters, is important as a 
promise rather than as an achievement. 

The next stejD is the use of words with meanings. With 
the expression of ideas, feelings, and wants in articulate 
words, proper language begins. Here the human infant 
parts company for good with the brute infant. The 
oaths of poor Poll, being purely mechanical, are not ac- 
counted profanity. From this time on the knowledge 
and the language of the normal child in general march to- 
gether pa?H j^cissu j knowledge advancing to the furthest 
reach of thought and the loftiest creations of the imagi- 
nation, language advancing to the fit expression of all that 
thought can think or imagination picture. Here we are 
brought back again to the correlation of the two factors. 
The child's mental development is measured approxi- 
mately by the rapidity of his progress toward a skilful 
manipulation of the instruments of expression ; on the 
other hand, thought itself attains to generality through 
the aid of language. 

Such, in outline, appears to be the process by which 
the instinctive vocal utterance of the infant is transformed 
into the vernacular speech of the youth and the adult. 
Still, this transformation would never be effected without 
the intervention of agents yet to be mentioned. These 
must be enumerated. 

The first of these agents is instinctive mimicry ; the 
child unconsciously imitates the sounds that he hears. 

The second agent is conscious mimicry ; the child 
intentionally imitates or reproduces sounds that he has 
heard. Imitation begins before the child has made dis- 
covery of the fact that sounds convey meanings, and it is 
accelerated when that discovery is made. Just as the 



36 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE- ARTS. 

discovery of the uses of walking re-enforces the child's dis- 
position to use his legs that results from the pleasure of 
activity, so the discovery of the significance of sounds 
stimulates the desire to make them. The process of cor- 
relating states of mind and sounds, as words, is a slow one, 
but it is greatly facilitated by the pleasure that the child 
finds in mere vocal experimentation. It may also be 
observed that the difficulty of making this correlation — 
that is, of associating meanings with sounds — has a moral 
as well as an intellectual bearing.* 

Imitation explains the utterance of words by the child 
without meaning. It is a habit that the child begins, 
and that the adult, with less excuse, continues. M. Taiue 
wrote of the child that he studied, when she was about 
fifteen months old : " ' Papa ' was pronounced for more 
than a fortnight unintentionally and without meaning, as 
a mere twitter, an easy and amusing articulation. It was 

* This point is thus touched by Jean Paul in a passage quoted 
by Radestock (Habit, page 84) : '* In the first five years our children 
say no true word and no lying one ; they only talk. Their speak- 
ing is a loud thinking ; but as often one half of the thought is Yes 
and the other No, and they, unlike us, utter both ; they appear to 
lie, while they only speak to themselves. Furthermore, they enjoy 
playing with the art of speech new to them ; thus they often speak 
nonsense, only to listen to their own knowledge of language." This 
may be somewhat exaggerated, but is true in the main. We are so 
in the habit of attributing ethical significance to language, that it 
is hard for us to appreciate the difficulty with which that associa- 
tion is practically established. At first the child has no more 
idea of telling the truth with his tongue than he has of telling 
it with his eyelids or toes. As Jean Paul says, the organs of speech 
are things to play with like the other organs of the body. The 
idea that there is a special relation existing between speech and 
veracity, that by our words we are justified and by our own words 
condemned, comes with the development of speech and of the 
moral sense. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CHILD'S LANGUAGE. 37 

later that the association between the word and the image 
or perception of the object was fixed, that the image or 
perception of her father called to her lips the sound papa^ 
that the word uttered by another definitely and regularly 
called up in her the remembrance, image, expectation of, 
and search for, her father. There was an insensible tran- 
sition from the one state to the other, which it is difficult 
to unravel. The first state still returns at certain times, 
though the second is established ; she still sometimes 
plays with the sound, though she understands its mean- 
mg. ^ 

Father, mother, sister, brother, nurse, and other mem- 
bers of the child's social circle act upon the child in two 
ways, unconsciously and consciously ; in both ways they 
set him copies or models and constantly stimulate his 
activity. Thus the members of the family become his 
teachers ; commonly they are as anxious to teach as the 
child is to learn ; but, whether anxious to teach or not, 
they do teach constantly, both by setting copies and by 
furnishing stimulus to talk. " Baby say so ! " with an 
appropriate illustration, is a constant exhortation that an- 
swers both purposes. 

Instinctive vocal utterance is the first contribution, and 
the power of imitation the second contribution, that Ma- 
ture makes to speech. Given instinctive utterance, it is 
imitation that makes speech education possible. 

" It is obvious at a glance," says Mr. Tracy, " that 
speech is a product of the conjoint operation of these two 
factors : heredity and education. If, on the one hand, we 
observe the initial babbling of the infant, and notice its 
marvellous flexibility, and the enormous variety of its in- 
tonations and inflections — and this at an age so early as 

* Mind, vol. ii, p. 254. 



38 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

to preclude observation and imitation of others, — it will 
be apparent that the child has come into the world al- 
ready possessing a considerable portion of the equipment 
by which he shall in after-years give expression to his 
feelings and thoughts. If, on the other hand, we care- 
fully observe him duriiig the first two years of his life, 
and note how the intonations, and afterward the words, 
of those by whom he is surrounded are given back by 
him — at first unconsciously, but afterwards with intention 
— and how, when conscious imitation has once set in, it 
plays thenceforth the predominating role, we shall readily 
believe that, without this second factor, but little prog- 
ress would be made toward speech acquirement." * 

Nature, then, supplies the instinctive tendency and ca- 
pacity to speak, and also the power that moulds the mind 
and the vocal organs according to the conventional stand- 
ard of speech. At what time the child begins to per- 
ceive that sounds convey meanings, and accordingly tries 
to talk, it is hard to say, but mere love of imitation is an 
earlier impulse, f 

* The [Psychology of Childhood, p. 116. 

f Mr. Darwin says the sounds uttered by birds offer in several 
aspects the nearest analogy to language ; all the members of the 
same species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of their 
emotions ; and all the kinds that have the power of singing exert 
this power instinctively ; but the actual song, and even the call- 
notes, are learned from their parents or foster-parents. These 
sounds are no more innate than language is in man. The first at- 
tempt to sing may be compared to the imperfect endeavour in a 
child to babble. The 5''oung males continue practising for ten or 
eleven months. Their first essays show hardly a rudiment of the 
future song ; but as they grow older we can perceive what they 
are aiming at ; and at last they are said " to sing their song round." 
Nestlings that have learned the songs of a distant species, as 
with the canary birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and transmit 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CHILD'S LANGUAGE. 39 

Let it be remembered that in the early process of 
speech education imitation is the master agent, indeed 
the sole agent. It determines (1) whether the child shall 
talk like a man, howl like a wolf, growl like a bear, or 
bark like a dog ; (2) whether he shall speak the English, 
the French, or some other language ; and (3) whether he 
shall speak this language with purity and propriety, or 
with dialectical, provincial, or family peculiarities of 
form, pronunciation, or accent. The boy was right who 
gave as a reason for drawling his words, " Mother — drawls 
— hern." The normal child who is accustomed to good 
English and nothing else, uses good English. The man 
who " talks like a book " is the man who has been 
moulded by book language. Thus, a man's language is a 
measure of the company he has kept, as well as of him- 
self. His speech shows the quality of his home and his 
social surroundings. Perhaps a child has an inherited 
tendency to the language of his country or his family, as 
the German to German, the Frenchman to French, but if 
such be the fact iroitation easily overcomes the tendency. 
Speech, therefore, is eminently a social phenomenon. 
"Language is 2^ossiMe in all normal children," says Mr. 
Tracy ; " it becomes actual only in the presence of a com- 
panion. But given the companion, and scarcely any 
limit can be set to the possibilities of development."* 
However, the companionship must be a real one. The 
reason why the child born deaf is also born mute is not 
because he is destitute of instinctive utterance, but be- 

their new song to their offspring. The slight natural differences 
of song in the same species inhabiting different districts may be 
appositely compared to provincial dialects ; and the songs of allied 
though distinct species may be compared with the language of dis- 
tant races of men. — The Descent of Man, vol. i, pp. 53, 54. 
* The Psychology of Childhood, p. 118. 



40 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

cause he can not imitate sounds ; when he does learn to 
talk, if ever, it is by watching and imitating the motions 
of another's lips. 

In this analysis we have found no trace of rule or for- 
mal method. As far as we have gone, neither rule nor 
method has played any part whatever in the process. 
In learning to talk, the child receives much correction, 
but no precepts. He follows example or copy : use and 
wont do the work. While it is impossible nicely to as- 
sign to either kind of imitation its own due effect, 
we hazard nothing in saying that we constantly tend 
to underestimate the unconsciousness or instinctive ele- 
ment. 

Accordingly, the child's vernacular speech results from 

the training of an instinctive function. It grows with his 
growth and strengthens with his strength. It is part and 
parcel of his mind and character, and perhaps of his 
physical organization. It is woven into the very texture of 
his being. It is his linguistic integument, fitting him as 
nicely as his skin. Moreover, it must be expanded and 
renovated in a way similar to that in which it was formed. 
One can not lay off his linguistic habit and put on another 
that is more to his liking, as he may a coat. He must 
grow it off, as the stag grows off his horns ; slough it, 
as the snake sloughs his skin. And yet, as we shall see 
hereafter, criticism will facilitate the process. 

Note. — The ancients clearly saw the function of imitation in 
education. Plato devotes much space to the subject, discussing the 
office of imitation in dancing, language, music, painting, science, 
literary style, and in the formation of the character itself (Laws, ii, 
655, 668; Cratylus, 423, 426, 427; Republic, iii, 393, 394). Xen- 
ophon also lays stress npon imitation, holding virtually that it is 
the most effective way to teach children behaviour and manners 
(Cyropaedia, i, 2). Aristotle discusses the relation of mimesis to 
art (Rhetoric, i, 11 ; Politics, i, 1, 23). Aristotle also enjoins the 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CHILD'S LANGUAGE. 41 

directors of education to be careful what tales or stories children 
hear, and also to see that they are left as little as possible with slaves 
(Politics, vii, 17). The Greeks were very particular about the lan- 
guage that their children acquired through personal contact with 
others (see Mahaffy : Old Greek Education, p. 13). Plutarch, in his 
well-known essay entitled Of the Training of Children, urges that 
the companions of children shall be well bred and shall speak plain, 
natural Greek, " lest, being constantly used to converse with persons 
of a barbarous language and evil manners, they receive corrupt tinc- 
tures from them. For it is a true proverb ' that if you live with a 
lame man you will learn to halt.' " Of all the writers of antiquity 
who touch the subject of education, Quintilian most abounds in 
practical thoughts. He understood perfectly the part that imita- 
tion plays in the language-arts. He laid stress upon the function 
of the nurse. Before all things let the talk of the child's nurse not 
be ungrammatical. To the morals of nurses, doubtless, attention 
should first be paid ; " but let them also speak with propriety. It 
is they that the child will hear first ; it is their words that he will 
try to form by imitation. We are by nature most tenacious of what 
we have imbibed in our infant years, as the flavour with which you 
scent vessels when new remains in them ; nor can the colours of 
wool, for which its plain w^hiteness has been exchanged, he effaced ; 
and those very habits which are of a more objectionable nature 
adhere with the gi'eater tenacity ; for good ones are easily changed 
for the worse, but when will you change bad ones into the good ? 
Let the child not be accustomed, therefore, even while he is yet an 
infant, to phraseology which must be unlearned." — (Institutes of Ora- 
tory, i, 1, 15, Watson's translation). As to the parents, Quintilian 
would by all means have them persons of learning ; as to the play- 
fellows and companions of young gentlemen, he made the same 
recommendations as concerning nurses. The Roman professor fully 
recognised the fact that correction and criticism were second to im- 
itation. 

Roger Ascham says : — 

" Imitation is a facultie to expresse liuelie and perfitelie that 
example : which ye go about to follow. And of it selfe, it is large 
and wide : for all the workes of nature, in a manner be examples 
for arte to follow. 

" But to our purpose, all languages, both learned and mother 
tonges, be gotten, and gotten onlie by imitation. For as ye vse to 



42 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

heare, so ye learne to speake : if ye heare no other, ye speake not 
your selfe : and whome ye onlie heare, of them ye onlie learne. 

" And, therefore, if ye would speake as the best and wisest do, 
ye must be conuersant, where the best and wisest are : but if you be 
borne or brought up in a rude countrie, ye shall not chose but 
speake rudelie : the rudest man of all knoweth this to be trewe." — 
(The Scholemaster.) 



CHAPTER YIL 

THE LAKGUAGE-AETS I]S" THE LOWER GEADES. 

To adopt Professor Laurie's admirable analysis, lan- 
guage may be studied under three aspects, as follows : — 

1. As the substance of thought. This means the con- 
tent or meaning of language, and relates, of course, to its 
characteristic function. This aspect of language is uni- 
versal, but there is no particular study that deals with it. 

2. As the form of thought. This means the reflexive 
study of language ; the study, not of the substance that 
the language conveys as a vehicle, but of the vehicle itself. 
This aspect of language is called grammar, and its educa- 
tional value will be explained hereafter. 

3. As an art. This means literature as such, or liter- 
ary art. There is no formal study that is coextensive 
with this aspect of language, but it is included in aesthet- 
ics, or what Lord Kames called "criticism." Here we 
deal with the ideal elements of language. 

Thus language is a real study, a formal study, and an 
art study. As " suhstance of thought," says Laurie, " lan- 
guage instructs and fills the mind of youth with the words 
of wisdom, with the material of knowledge, and guides it to 
the meaning and motives of a rational existence, and while 
doing all this it at the same time trains the intelligence : 
as a formal study, it further disciplines the intelligence, 
and gives vigour and discriminative force to intellectual 

43 



4i TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

operations in all the relations of the human mind to 
things, and therefore to the conduct of life : as literature^ 
. . . language cultivates, by opening the mind to a per- 
ception of the beautiful in form and the ideal in thought 
and action. It does this by bringing the prosaic truths 
of goodness and duty into the sphere of the idea, and so 
evoking and directing those aspirations, inherent in rea- 
son, which find their highest expression in spiritual re- 
alities." * 

It will be seen that literature, properly so called, is 
something wholly different from the grammatical struc- 
ture of language, and in great part different also from its 
concrete substance. Literature and language, or rather 
literature and printed language, are by no means co- 
extensive. This third aspect of the subject, the aesthetic 
one, will claim our attention in a later chapter. 

Now, it is perfectly evident that in the first stage of 
school life the child can do nothing with language as the 
form of thought or as beauty of expression. He can not 
enter upon grammar or upon literary art. But with lan- 
guage as substance of thought, or reality, he can deal, pro- 
vided this substance is properly handled. He can not, 
indeed, be expected at first to receive new knowledge or 
new ideas from the printed page. For the time his 
strength is mainly absorbed in the technical elements of 
reading; he can do nothing more on the thought side 
than to associate old ideas with their printed symbols ; and 
so some time must elapse before reading can become to him 
a source of real knowledge. He may all the time be add- 
ing, and should all the time be adding, to his real knowl- 
edge through direct contact with thought-material; his 
studies of things and his study of the art of reading should 

* Language and Linguistic Method, p. 96. 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE LOWER GRADES. 45 

be as closely connected as possible ; but it still remains 
true that, at this stage of progress, reading itself, or read- 
ing proper, is not a source of such knowledge. The 
teacher must take the child where she finds him in re- 
spect to both mental and language power, and seek to 
develop him in both directions. The principal methods 
or devices that may be employed will now be enumerated. 

1. The first means to be employed by the teacher is 
conversations with the class on suitable subjects suggest- 
ed by the incidents of everyday life in school and out 
of school. The pupils should be encouraged to engage 
freely in these conversations, encouraged to reproduce 
their own observation and experience. While the lan- 
guage used by the teacher should be somewhat in advance 
of that habitually used by the class, it should yet be with- 
in their comprehension. Judgment and tact will prevent 
the introduction of improper subjects.* 

2. The second means is tales and stories in prose and 

* How potent a means of education communication is, Lord Ba- 
con suggests in his essay entitled Of Friendship. " Certain it is," 
he says, " that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, 
his wits and understanding do clarify and break up, in the commu- 
nicating and discoursing with another : he tosseth his thoughts 
more easily ; he marshaleth them more orderly ; he seeth how 
they look when they are turned into words ; finally, he waxeth 
wiser than himself ; and that more by an hour's discourse than by 
a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the King 
of Persia, that speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and put 
abroad ; whereby the imagery doth appear in figure ; whereas in 
thoughts they lie but as in packs. Neither is this second fruit of 
friendship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to such 
friends as are able to give a man counsel (they, indeed, are best) : but 
even without that, a man learneth of himself, and bringeth his own 
thoughts to light, and whetteth his wits as against a stone, which 
itself cuts not. In a word, a man were better relate himself to a 
statua or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother." 



46 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

verse. At first the teacher should herself tell or read 
the stories and tales ; then make them the subject of con- 
versation, requiring the pupils to reproduce them in their 
own words as fully as possible. Fairyland may be drawn 
upon as well as history, travel, and biography. To those 
educationists who object that fairy tales are fictitious, and 
that only the real should be taught, Professor Laurie re- 
plies that " the imagination of little children is very active 
in the sphere of the possible and impossible ; that this nor- 
mal activity of the imagination contributes largely to the 
growth, culture, and enrichment of mind ; and that it has 
to be taken advantage of by the educator who respects 
law wherever he finds it." " Where would Homer and 
Sophocles have been," he asks, " had they not imbibed 
mythological lore with their mother's milk ? Even the 
genius of Shakespeare would have perished in the thirsty 
desert of a childhood of bare facts." He further affirms 
that " what applies to children applies a fortiori to the 
adult ; and that fiction, the drama, and art ought, in con- 
sistency, to be excluded from all life by those who would 
deny the unreal to children. It might also be shown . . . 
that in the active imaginations of children and their ap- 
preciation of fairy stories, we see at work, in a rudi- 
mentary way, the capacity for the ideals of art and re- 
ligion." * There is reason to think that at present we tend 
to make the education of the child too matter-of-fact, too 
scientific, forgetting that the child has imagination and 
emotion as well as logical faculties. What could be better 
than the following from Mr. Lowell ? — 

" I am glad to see that what the understanding would 
stigmatize as useless is coming back into books written 
for children, which at one time threatened to become more 

* Lectures on Language and Linguistic Method, pp. 29, 30. 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE LOWER GRADES. 47 

and more drearily practical and didactic. The fairies are 
permitted once more to imprint their rings on the tender 
sward of the child's fancy, and it is the child's fancy that 
often lives obscurely on to minister solace to the lonelier 
and less sociable mind of the man. Our nature resents 
the' closing up of the windows on its emotional and im- 
aginative side, and revenges itself as it can. ... In a last 
analysis it may be said that it is to the sense of Wonder 
that all literature of the Fancy and of the Imagination 
ajDpeals. I am told that this sense is the survival in us of 
some savage ancestor of the age of flint. If so, I am 
thankful to him for his longevity, or his transmitted na- 
ture, whichever it may be. But I have my own suspicion 
sometimes that the true age of flint is before and not be- 
hind us, an age hardening itself more and more to those 
subtle influences which ransom our lives from the cap- 
tivity of the actual, from that dungeon whose warder is 
the Giant Despair. Yet I am consoled by thinking that 
the siege of Troy will be remembered when those of Vicks- 
burg and Paris are forgotten. One of the old dramatists, 
Thorns Heywood, has, without meaning it, set down for 
us the uses of the poets : 

" * They cover us ^Yith counsel to defend us 
From storms without ; they polish us within 
With learning, knowledge, arts, and disciplines ; 
All that is naught and vicious they sweep from us 
Like dust and cobwebs ; our rooms concealed 
Hang with the costliest hangings 'bout the walls 
Emblems and beauteous symbols pictured round.' " * 

3. At this stage of progress object lessons are a useful 
mode of teaching language as well as of teaching sensible 
qualities. The method is to make objects subjects of 
conversation. It is well to keep in mind the historical 

* The Old English Dramatists, pp. 131, 132. 



48 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-xlRTS. 

steps by which knowledge advances.* We must remember 
that education had not only begun, but made considerable 
advancement, before the invention of letters ; that men's 
minds were first formed through contact with the natural 
world and with one another; that what the individual ac- 
cumulated, he delivered by word of mouth to others ; that 
for long the oral teacher was the only teacher ; that mem- 
ory, left dependent upon itself, performed miracles, and 
that tradition became a great instrument of cultivation. 
Books and printing have changed all this to a great extent. 
Eelying upon books as we do, and accustomed as we are 
to associate ignorance and incapacity with illiteracy, we 
find difficulty in appreciating the heights to which men 
have sometimes attained who were strangers to the printed 
page. " The Hebrew patriarchs had small libraries, I 
think, if any," says the Autocrat ; " yet they represent to 
our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood ; and, I 
think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us men 
of letters next Saturday, we should feel honoured by his 
company." It is important to remember the sources of 
the primitive culture of the race, for they are still the 
sources of the first culture of the individual. Letters did 
not abolish our natural senses and mental faculties, 
although they have, most unfortunately, sometimes pro- 
moted their decay. 

4. The reading lessons are a most important agency 
in language teaching. These should be well discussed 
and understood by the pupils. While the readers used in 
the school should meet the child nearly on his own level, 
intellectual and linguistic, they should also tend to en- 
large his knowledge and his vocabulary ; they should 
point upward. This important subject will not be more 
fully discussed here, since it will be made the subject of 
a separate chapter. 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE LOWER GRADES. 49 

5. Selections of poetry should be committed to memory 
to be recited, to be sung, to be made the subject of con- 
versation. This exercise may be conducted on a generous 
scale ; it will confer some knowledge, but especially will 
it develop and refine the vocabulary, provided the selec- 
tions are properly made. Furthermore, it will develop 
taste. Beautiful poems committed to memory in child- 
hood will be a perennial wellspring of cultivation and 
delight. Nor is it necessary, or even advisable perhaps, 
that the pupil should understand all the passages that he 
learns. At this point persons who overestimate the in- 
tellectual elements of education commit a mistake. Pas- 
sages that are but faintly understood, may strongly move 
the imagination and mould the feelings. Who that leads 
an intellectual life does not every now and then, for the 
first time, really see into some passage which he committed 
to memory in childhood? * 

6. The last agent to be mentioned is written exercises. 
Sentences, stanzas, and short paragraphs should be copied. 
At the beginning the slate or loose pieces of paper may 
be used, but afterward a book should be provided for the 
purpose. The exercise may be copied from the blackboard 
or a book, or may be taken down from the teacher's dic- 
tation. These exercises, though simple, should always con- 
tain a thought of value to the child. A few simple rules 
should be furnished by the teacher and be strictly insisted 
upon — such, for example, as these : " The sentence should 
always begin with a capital letter." " Proper names 
should begin with a capital." " The completed sentence 

* Sir Walter Scott understood this matter much better than 
some schoolmasters. " Children," he wrote, " derive impulses of a 
powerful and important kind from hearing things that they can not 
entirely comprehend. It is a mistake to write down to their under- 
standings. Set them on the scent, and let them puzzle it out." 



50 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

sliould be marked by the period or the question mark." 
The pujDil will have no difficulty, in plain cases, in dis- 
tinguishing between the sentence that says something and 
the question that asks something. Such exercises as 
these teach spelling, penmanship, and expression all at 
the same time. 

But more than this. The pupils should compose origi- 
nal exercises from the very beginning. The first sen- 
tences should not differ from the corresponding oral ones, 
save in the employment of written language in the room 
of oral language. At first ideas should be furnished or 
suggested, as w^ell as the subject itself ; afterward only 
the subject or topic, while the pupil is left to supply ideas 
and words. At a still later stage of progress the pupil 
should be thrown wholly upon his own resources, leaving 
him to find subject, ideas, and language. Such exercises 
naturally connect themselves with object lessons, as the 
primary books devoted to language lessons amply illus- 
trate. These original sentences are the germ of the 
future theme or essay. 

The foregoing suggestions of method should be ac- 
companied by several remarks. 

First, as has been intimated, these suggestions have 
more value than at first appears. The words "language" 
and " literature " are far from exhausting their value. 
For example, it is through stories and tales that Ger- 
man teachers lay the foundation of that admirable work 
in history which ^s the praise of the German schools. 
The Ilerbart-Ziller school of pedagogists, who lay such 
great stress upon history, say instruction should begin at 
the beginning of school life. Holding that the child's 
love for stories is the first awakening of his mind to 
historic interest, they make it their first endeavour to 
stimulate this love by systematic story-telling. Tlie art 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE LOWER GRADES. 51 

of telling a story they regard as the final test of a teach- 
er's skill, and they assign it a prominent place in normal 
school instruction. Still further, they have worked out a 
primary programme in accordance with their pedagogical 
scheme. They have arranged a number of Grimm's tales, 
which they make the centre of instruction for the first 
school year. These stories are told and retold by the teacher, 
reproduced item by item by the children, and around them 
are clustered moral and religious sentiments, material in- 
formation, and illustrative object lessons. The next 3^ear, 
connected stories from Eobinson Crusoe are treated in the 
same manner. Then come selected tales from the Old 
Testament, and still later selections from the Odyssey, the 
Norse Sagas, Shakespeare, Herodotus, Livy, Xenophon, 
and others in due order. In this way the historical sense 
is developed and centres of interest created before tech- 
nical instruction begins.* 

The poems that are committed to memory should be 
selected with reference to their ethical value. / President 
Eliot, of Harvard University, expresses a common expe- 
rience when he says, " I hold in my memory bits of po- 
etry, learned in childhood, which have stood me in good 
stead through life in the struggle to keep true to just 
ideals of love and dnty." The old poet George Herbert 

is right : 

" A verse may find him who a sermon flies." 

Properly managed, instruction in the language-arts devel- 
ops the historical, the ethical, and the literary sense, as 
well as power to think and power to express thought. 

Secondly, association continues to work as before, but 
under somewhat new conditions. Here, again, are the 
two forms of imitation, the instinctive and the conscious. 



* See the author's How to Study and Teach History, chap. v. 



52 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

and the scope of their activity is increased through the 
enlargement of environment. The school is now added 
to the family and to the social circle — the school consist- 
ing of the teacher and the scholars. The last are a po- 
tent factor. " You send your boy to the schoolmaster," 
says Emerson, " but it is the schoolboys who educate 
him." Sometimes the school shows an improvement and 
sometimes a deterioration in the linguistic environment ; 
but, on the average, we may believe that the new stage 
in child life shows improved conditions. The linguistic 
effect of pupil upon pupil may be likened to the moral 
effect. To a certain extent parents and teachers can ex- 
ercise a selective influence here, as in respect to manners, 
morals, and general cultivation, but taking the multitude 
together such influence is not very great. 

The third observation is that small — very small — reli- 
ance should be placed on rules, and then only in matters 
that are purely mechanical. " Children are not to be 
tauglit by rules which shall always be slipping out of 
their memories," says John Locke. " What you think it 
necessary for them to do, settle in them by an indispen- 
sable practice. . . . Nothing sinks so quietly and deep into 
men's minds as examples." 

Even at the cost of what may seem unreasonable re- 
iteration, attention must once more be drawn to the rela- 
tions of thought and speech. If the doctrine heretofore 
advanced be true — that thought and language are prac- 
tically inseparable ; that the two are really but different 
aspects of the one subject ; that growth in thought and 
growth in language should be promoted in the school — 
then the conclusion may perhaps be drawn that instruc- 
tion along either line will answer in both lines. Not so ; 
thought and language do not measure each other abso- 
lutely; and although it is true tliat good instruction in 



THE LANG [J AGE-ARTS IN THE LOWER GRADES. 53 

either line helps in the other one, still there must be 
separate and distinct instruction in both lines. It is a 
question of emphasis ; now thought will be emj)hasized, 
and then language. The common child will not pick up 
the elementary school arts by the way, without his own 
knowledge, but he must consciously learn them. He will 
not learn to read, write, and compose essays with power, 
ease, and correctness, incidentally, while giving exclusive 
attention or preponderant attention to something else. 
Thought-expression must be emphasized as well as thought- 
material. 

From birth to death there are four agents that pro- 
mote our education in vernacular language — that develop 
our powers of mind, and enlarge and clarify our means of 
expression. These agents are here enumerated in the 
order of their value : — , 

1. Association, or social relations with our fellows, in- 
cluding listening to cultivated speech of a formal charac- 
ter, as sermons, orations, and the like. 

2. The reading of good literature, both in and out of 
school. 

3. Formal instruction in the language-arts, speech, 
reading, and composition. 

4. The scientific study of language, and particularly 
of one's vernacular, or grammar. 

The first of these agents works in the life of the child 
from its birth, ceaselessly and powerfully. In no field of 
human activity or cultivation does imitation play a greater 
part than here. The second' and third agents do not ap- 
pear in the life of a majority of children until they go to 
school ; and even in the minority, who have made some 
progress in those arts before that time, they work but 
feebly. Here, too, imitation asserts itself strongly. The 
fourth agent never becomes a practical factor in the edu- 
6 



54 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

cation of a majority of children, because they do not study 
grammar ; while in the cases of those who do study it, it 
is much less effective than the other three. 

At the present time there is much comment upon the 
bad training in English of the youth of the country, and 
particularly of those who come to the better colleges. 
There can be no question that this comment has much 
justification. In the search for causes of the existing 
state of things, and in the attempts to locate the blame, 
quite insufficient attention has been paid to the relatively 
low stage of general cultivation, including the language- 
arts, of the vast constituency of the schools. This state- 
ment includes pupils and teachers, because it includes the 
whole community. The schools are to blame, but not 
wholly so. Training in language, more than training in 
anything else, bespeaks the child's or the man's personal 
cultivation ; and the roots of this cultivation are not 
reached directly by the conscious processes of the school. 



L-i 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LAKGUAGE-AKTS IK THE HIGHER GRADES AKD IK 
THE HIGH SCHOOLS. 

There can be no greater mistake in educational theory 
than to suppose that the child, at any given time, passes 
by a leap from one stage of mental development to another, 
and no greater mistake in educational practice than sud- 
denly to put aside one set of agencies for another set. The 
child-life is a continuous evolution — enlarging indeed rap- 
idly at times, but never so rapidly as to snap the thread 
of continuity. Since there is no break in the child-life at 
the age of eight years, there should be no break in the 
teacher's regimen. Changes of method and of regimen 
should come as gradually as the changes of the mind itself. 
Sameness in kind, however, does not necessitate sameness 
in degree. Progressively, the exercises that are continued 
into the second period of school life from the first one 
should be made more thorough and more difficult, as the 
child is able to bear them. Still further, the total amount 
of stress or emphasis may be, and should be, reapportioned 
or redistributed. For example, as the pupil ascends the 
grades less stress should be laid upon concrete facts and 
ideas, and more upon abstract facts and ideas. The full 
training of a mind demands that abstract subjects should 
receive due attention in their time as well as object les- 
sons in their time. 

55 



56 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

Accordingly, the means to be employed in teaching 
the language-arts after the third year do not really differ 
in kind from those employed before that time, save in one 
or two particulars. In the first years of the new period 
that now begins all the agencies before mentioned should 
still be continued. Some stress must be withdrawn, as 
the work goes on, from the oral exercises, and be put 
upon the reading and writing exercises. The pupil must 
slowly learn how to use a book — that is, really to read ; 
and this he will never do unless he uses books. Noth- 
ing is more destructive of good habits in the pupil than 
the continuous flow of the teacher's talk, no matter how 
good the talk may be. As the grades are passed the 
teacher should become less prominent in the school life, 
and the subjects of study, and notably the printed page, 
become more prominent. " For what other purpose has 
teaching," asks Quintilian, " than that a pupil may at last 
be under no necessity of being taught ? " 

I shall now describe in order the exercises to be 
employed in this more advanced stage of language- 
teaching. 

1. The copying and dictation exercises should be con- 
tinued as a rule. Sentences may be dismissed, and the 
stanza, the paragraph, and the poem used instead. It will 
be found advantageous in time to cause the pupil to 
transcribe considerable compositions. The benefits of 
such exercises are obvious. Besides being lessons in spell- 
ing, in penmanship, and in expression, they enrich the 
understanding, enlarge the vocabulary, and lay the foun- 
dation of style. If the pupil falls into the spirit of the 
piece. Imitation will at once begin to work her spell. 
Demosthenes, it is said, copied Thucydides's History of 
the Peloponnesian War six times with his own hand. 
But it will not do to permit such exercises to degenerate 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE HIGHER GRADES. 57 

into mere mechanical routine ; they must be made fully 
intelligent. 

2. Composing themes or essays. The most marked 
difference between the second period and the first one is 
the expansion of the constructive work. A characteristic 
exercise is the story, theme, or essay, which at first should 
be limited to the single paragraph. To bridge the chasm 
between the single sentences of the first grades and the 
formal compositions of later grades, is the hardest thing 
to be done in teaching composition. Here no better 
method can be employed than the one anciently described 
by Quintilian. He first recommends that those pupils 
who are too young to enter upon the direct study of 
oratory shall, in the first place, " relate orally the fables 
of ^sop, which follow next after the nurse's stories, in 
plain language, not rising ^t all above mediocrity, and 
afterwards to express the same simplicity in writing." He 
then recommends paraphrasing. As to the poets, let the 
boys take to pieces their verses, and then express them in 
different words ; and afterwards represent them, " some- 
what boldly, in a paraphrase, in which it is allowable to 
abbreviate or embellish certain parts, provided that the 
sense of the poet be preserved." He recommends also the 
writing of sentences, and especially of what he calls clirice, 
which is the relation of some saying or action, and not 
different apparently from the "story" method so com- 
monly found in our schools.* 

It would be very unwise, however, to call the simple 
exercises done at the beginning of these grades essays or 
compositions. Professor Laurie thinks " essays " should not 
appear until the fourteenth year. Much depends upon a 
name or a definition. The fact is, if the language work 

* Institutes of Oratory, i, 9, 3. 



58 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

is properly graded you can not tell when the pupil writes 
his first essay, so insensibly will language lessons shade 
into essays. 

3. Paraphrasing. What has already been said about 
oral paraphrasing is equally true of written. Much more 
is also to be said of both. 

Professor Laurie objects to paraphrasing, which he calls 
" turning into commonplace language, which ' any fellow 
may understand,' the verses of a poet, or the succinct 
prose of such writers as Bacon and Browne. ... A more 
detestable exercise," he says, " I do not know. It is a vile 
use of pen and ink. ... To paraphrase Milton or Shake- 
speare," he goes on, " is to turn the good into the inferior 
or bad, and to degrade literature. Moreover, it is false. 
For the youth who has done it imagines that his sentences 
give all that is to be found in the original Milton or Bacon. 
If this were so, then there would, alas ! be no such thing 
as literature, no such thiag as art in language. When all 
is done, you have no longer got Bacon or Milton, but only 
your much lesser self." * It is interesting to observe that 
Eoger Ascham held the same view. " It is a bold com- 
parison indeed," he says in The Scholemaster, " to think 
to say better than that is best. Such turning of the best 
into worse is much like the turning of good wine out of a fair 
sweet flagon of silver into a foul, musty bottle of leather ; 
or to turn pure gold and silver into foul brass and cop- 
per." Quintilian, however, recommended paraphrasing, 
very much to Ascham's disgust. To much paraphrasing 
the objection is perfectly valid. The object of the exer- 
cise is not, as Ascham seems to suppose, to better what is 
best, but rather to improve the style of the pupil. Still, 
there is no merit in simply marring what is beautiful. A 

* Pp. 50, 51. 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE HIGHER GRADES. 59 

writer in tlie Saturday Review deservedly condemns the 
making-over of such lines as these : 

" To mute and to material things 
New life revolving summer brings ; 
The gentle call dead Nature hears, 
And in her glory reappears." 

The flowers of literature are too delicate and fragile to be 
roughly handled. To paraphrase, for instance, Tenny- 
son's Brook is most absurd ; the poem is ethereal, all music, 
and one might as well paraphrase the song of the lark. 
But if narrative verse is chosen, verse that has body and 
substance, paraphrasing is a very useful exercise, as most 
teachers will testify. Passages of Sir Walter Scott's poems, 
stories as they are and full of fire and animation, may be 
recommended as good material. To a degree the contro- 
versy is one about words. Even Laurie recommends what 
he calls " resolution " or " dialysis," which consists in the 
writing out of a piece of poetry in grammatical prose 
order, supplying words understood, but always preserving 
the language of the poet. 

4. The imitation of chosen models. The recommenda- 
tion of this practice does not mean that the pupil shall 
consciously copy an author's style. Such a course would 
destroy individuality and end in helplessness. The model 
should rather work in the pupil, and through him, as it 
will do if he really becomes absorbed in the modeL The 
beneficial influence of great writers upon style is indirect. 
The stronger an author's personality, the stronger the 
hold that he will take of his readers and the greater will 
be his influence. Students of Bacon, Milton, or Shake- 
speare are influenced not so much directly in their thought 
or style as indirectly through what they absorb uncon- 
sciously. At first, nothing more can be expected than 
that the pupil will fall into the author's mode of express- 



CO TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

ing thongbt, which he will do if really interested. After- 
ward he should study authors critically. Dr. Johnson 
said a man who wished to write well should give his days 
and nights to Addison, which is sound advice, provided 
Addison is thought to be a proper model. 

It is especially important that the teaching of the lan- 
guage-arts should be conducted on the intensive plan. 
Tbere is a reciprocal relation between speaking and read- 
ing, while language or composition should be kept in close 
touch with the reading lessons, and particularly with the 
literature. The study of literature will furnish subjects 
and materials as well as models of expression. Constant 
care must be taken to develop literary taste, and this can 
be done only through constant contact with good reading 
matter. Khetoric and criticism may purge the taste, but 
alone they never reform it any more than they form it in 
the first place. 

5. Translation. There can be no doubt that this exer- 
cise is very beneficial to those students who carefully study 
a foreign language. It involves the two elements of un- 
conscious imitation and of practice. Translation was 
the great reliance of Ascham in teaching Latin. He 
strongly advises what he called " double translations " — 
that is, first rendering a letter of Cicero's, for example, 
into English, and then translating it again into Latin. 
These are his words : 

" Translation is easy in the beginning for the scholar, 
and bringeth also much learning and great judgment to 
the master. It is most common and most commendable 
of all other exercises for youth. Most common for all 
your constructions in grammar schools be nothing else 
but translations ; but because they be not double trans- 
lations, as I do require, they bring forth but simple and 
single commodity, and because also they lack the daily 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE HlGnER GRADES. 61 

use of writing, which is the only thing that breedeth deep 
root, both in the wit, for good understanding, and in the 
memory, for sure keeping of all that is learned. Most 
commendable also, and that by the judgment of all au- 
thors which entreat of these exercises." * 

Still, it is a mistake to teach the second language in 
school in the early grades. It leads to confusion and 
weakness ; what is gained in the foreign tongue is lost in 
the mother tongue. On this point Professor Laurie's re- 
marks quoted on a previous page may be again cited. Still, 
I must not fail to remark that it is very desirable for those 
children who are expected to study one or more languages 
at some time to take up the second one before the high 
school is reached. 

The foregoing suggestions cover in general the whole 
field of language work up to the high school ; indeed, 
properly expanded, they include the high school also. 
Some of them are of principal or exclusive application 
in lower grades, some in upper grades. To consider the 
grades, one by one, with reference to the specific kind of 
work that should be done in each, would not be in har- 
mony with the plan of this work ; nor is it thought to be 
necessary, especially as reading and composition will be 
made the subject of discussion in future chapters. 

To the foregoing methods of instruction two others 
should be added that will find their main application and 
use in the high school. 

The first of these is the study of etymologies. The 
derivation of words is not always a safe guide to their 
meaning. Language is often illogical. Thi* is particu- 
larly true of the technical terms of science. '' ' Hydro- 
gen ' and ' oxygen,' ' meiocene ' and * pleiocene,' " says Mr. 

* Book II, Translation. 



62 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

Marsh, "are modern compounds of Greek roots, but, how- 
ever familiar their radicals, these terms wonld no more 
explain themselves to the intelligence of a Greek than to 
an unlettered Englishman." The meanings of such words 
must be sought in dictionaries and works of science. " We 
can not learn all words," Mr. Marsh proceeds, " through 
other words. There is a large and rapidly increasing part 
of all modern vocabularies, which can be comprehended 
only by the observation of IS^ature, scientific experiment, 
in short by the study of tilings. " * 

We can, however, learn many words through other 
words. Often a clear idea of a common radical will illu- 
minate a whole family of words. The student who sees 
that Latin prendere means to seize or grasp gets a firmer 
hold of " comprehend " and of " apprehend," and of the two 
large families of words of which these are members. A 
limited number of nouns and verbs, combined with a few 
prepositions, have given us a large part of our working 
vocabulary. " Example," " exemplification," " ensample," 
" sample," and the like, all go back to exemplum^ and this 
again to the verb exi?nere. *' Instruction," " construction," 
"destruction," differ only in the three different prepo- 
sitions that form the first syllables. We seem to have a 
clearer view of the helplessness of the baby when we think 
of him as the " infant," the not-speaking one. A " fable " 
should be anything that is told, and a " legend " anything 
that is read, rather than what they are at present. The 
Roman virtiis was courage, and the use of the word in its 
present sense suggests the high valuation that has been 
attached to that virtue. An aristocracy should be a gov- 
ernment of the best. " Sincerity " and " cerement " are 
alike in this, that the root of each is cera^ meaning wax. 

* Lcct urcs on the English Language, p. 84. 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE HIGHER GRADES. 63 

" Trivialities " are the unconsidered matters that men 
are apt to exchange at the crossings of the way or road. 
These examples are all drawn from the Latin side of the 
English speech. The composition of Saxon words is often 
equally interesting. Consider the families of words de- 
rived from the names of the members of the body, hand, 
foot, head, and mouth. Not everybody has thought that 
" nosegay " is a compound of the two familiar words that 
compose it. Whether much time is given to the roots or 
not, prefixes and suffixes should be a subject of study in 
all schools above the lower grades. 

Word-building often adds new force to the meaning 
of words. It gives new clearness to the pupil's ideas ; it 
increases his resources of expression ; and, not least, it 
creates a habit of observation and analysis that adds ma- 
terially to the interest and value of language. While it 
is most beneficial to students who have studied a second 
language, and particularly Latin, its benefits are not con- 
fined to them. It is therefore highly important that all 
teachers of language should turn the attention of their 
pupils to the study of etymology. 

The other line of study referred to is the history of 
words, or not so much the history of words as the history 
that is in words. " Words," Emerson says, " are fossil 
poetry." They are fossil history as well. They register 
opinions, states of society, political facts, the progress of 
ideas. The word " pagan " informs us that in the Eoman 
Empire the villagers, pagani^ clung to the old religion 
when the dwellers in cities had accejDted Christianity. 
The word " heathen " points to a similar relation be- 
tween the heathmen and the townsmen in Saxon Eng- 
land. " Eustic " and " urban " mark the contrast between 
country and town in manners. Politics, as the word 
shows, originated in the city {iroXig). " Jewsharp " and 



64 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

" tenpenny " nail have each a history. With what eager 
interest the reader having a smattering of philology, reads 
the conversation between Wamba and Gurth in Ivanhoe 
that brings out the historical significance of swine and 
porJc^ ox and leef^ calf and veal^ sheep and mutton I The 
first word of each pair is Saxon, the second Norman, show- 
ing, as Wamba says, that the animal is Saxon w^hen he 
requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he 
becomes a matter of enjoyment. Scott uses these ety- 
mologies to illustrate how little the Normans had left to 
the Saxons ; while the finest and the fattest were for the 
Norman board, the loveliest for the Norman couch, the 
best and bravest for the Norman host. The history of 
Europe is largely written in its languages, and the geo- 
graphical nomenclature of America tells of races and tribes 
that have passed or are passing away. " Mountains and 
streams," it has been said, " still murmur the voices of 
nations long since denationalized or extirpated." 

It goes without saying that the science of language has 
come to be an important source of historical information, 
but its effect on the course of history itself has not been 
as fully recognised. " The new theory of language," says 
Sir H. S. Maine, "has unquestionably produced a new 
theory of race. ... To this theory of race," he adds, " we 
owe, at all events in part, the vast development of German 
nationality ; and we certainly owe to it the pretensions of 
the Eussian Empire to at least a presidency over all Sla- 
vonic communities." Panslavism has been called "philo- 
logical sentiment." The learned writer might, with equal 
propriety, have mentioned the part that the new race the- 
ory played in the unification of Italy. 

The interest and value of such studies as these are 
found mainly in discipline and in culture. And yet, 
whatever makes language more significant, more vivid. 



THE LANGUAGE-ARTS IN THE HIGHER GRADES. 65 

more picturesque, enhances its value as an instrument of 
thought. Study of the etymology and history of words 
in schools should be encouraged. Such study may be 
entered upon in a tentative manner before the high 
school is reached. Sneer as scientific philologists may 
at Trench's Study of Words, that book has quickened the 
linguistic interest of many minds ; and were it brought up 
to the front of the latest scholarship, retaining its popular 
character, it would still be a good book to put on the table 
of every teacher of English in the country. 

A further word may well be said about one of the 
topics treated above. The translation that helps the pu- 
pil in his English is the actual transference of thought 
from good Latin or German into good English. The mere 
matching of words is of little value. Idiomatic English 
is what is wanted. Moreover, translation is accompanied 
by a double difficulty : the pupil is called upon to grasp 
the thought of the writer contained in a foreign language, 
and then to express this thought in his own language. 
In many cases either one of these efforts taxes his ability 
severely, and frequently overtaxes it. The more remote 
the passage from his own habitual mental life, the sorer 
the trial. The vehicle is new and the burden that it 
carries heavy. A frequent result is that translations are 
accepted which, in respect to English, would not for a 
moment be tolerated as original compositions. Accord- 
ingly, this is a point to be watched, lest the Latin or 
German lesson undoes the English lesson. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE AKT OF READIN^G. 

As we have seen, the first mental cultivation of the 
race originated in its contact with the external world, ma- 
terial and social ; the second, in its contact with the ex- 
perience of the living or the dead communicated by oral 
tradition. The third came with the invention of writing 
and the production of books. These steps every individ- 
ual repeats in the same order. 

" With the art of writing," says Carlyle, " of which 
printing is a simple, an inevitable, and comparatively in- 
significant corollary, the true reign of miracles for man- 
kind commenced. . . . All things were altered for men : 
all modes of important work of men — teaching, preaching, 
governing, and all else." He contrasts the university of 
the thirteenth century with the university of the nine- 
teenth — the one a place of listening, the other of reading. 
" If we think of it," he continues, " all that a university 
or final highest school can do for us is still but what the 
first school began doing — teach us to read.''' And again, 
"The true university of these days is a collection of 
books." * It is true that Carlyle wrote this celebrated pas- 
sage before the day of laboratory methods ; but if he were 
living now, it is not probable that he would care to change 
a word of it. There is, indeed, a long-standing controversy 

* The Hero as Man of Letters. 
06 



THE ART OF READING. 67 

about things and words as instruments of education — 
realism and verbalism. Some children take the third 
step in education before coming to school ; all pay, or 
should pay, much attention to things after reaching it ; 
still the book gives to the school, and particularly to the 
elementary school, its character, and reading is, and will 
continue to be, the first and greatest of the elementary 
school arts. The ancient Jews significantly called the 
school " the house of the book." We are now to see 
what its use involves. 

The relation of the author to his composition is that of 
a creator to his creature, or of a father to his child. Ac- 
cording to the Greek conception, the poet is the " maker " 
(TTotTjTTjg), and such also, in a less eminent degree perhaps, 
is the prose writer.* Some part of an author's knowledge, 
thought, feeling, or purpose — one or all of these ; that is, 
some part of the author himself — flows into his work. 
This is the sense of the word " author." Mr. Lowell 
once said that the Greek classics are rammed with life, 
and so in some degree is all literature worthy of the name. 
The author is like Jesus in the miracle — virtue goes out of 
him. But the life or virtue is inert and powerless so long 
as the book lies unused on the shelf. As Dr. Holmes calls 
him, the librarian is the sexton of the alcoved tomb — 
" Where souls in leathern cerements lie." 

The function of the reader is different from that of 
the author, and is yet like it. He takes up a dead com- 
position and makes it live again. He recreates, if he does 
not create. He evokes from the printed page what the 
writer put into it. He restores the writer, so far as he 
put himself into his work. He reanimates the souls that 

* In Elizabethan English " maker " is the current term for poet, 
and " make " for writing verses. 



68 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

lie in leathern cerements. When he brings out of a com- 
position bearing one of those names all the Shakespeare, 
Bacon, or Tennyson that it holds, he reads it, and not 
until then. Mark Pattison says the scholar is greater 
than his books. The result of his labours is not so many 
thousand pages of folio, but himself. The Paradise Lost 
is a grand poem, but how much grander was the living 
soul who spoke it ! Philosophy is not a doctrine, but a 
method. Philosophical systems as put upon paper do not 
embody philosophy. Philosophy perishes in the moment 
you would teach it. Knowledge is not the thing known, 
but the mental effort which knows. And so it is with 
learning.* But there is another point of view. Imper- 
fect as they are, books are the best expression of the 
minds that have produced them. If Milton falls below 
his own level in Paradise Lost, he rises again in the j\Iil- 
tonic reader. And while i)^^ilosophy may perish in the 
act of teaching, and knowledge cease to be in the act of 
transmission, they reappear in the disciple as the power 
that philosophizes and the activity that knows. Eeading, 
to be sure, is relative, not absolute. A child's reading of 
Shakespeare is one thing, Coleridge's quite another. 

In a previous chapter we have seen that knowledge is 
purely subjective ; that if all minds were to perish, knowl- 
edge would cease to exist, even if all the existing symbols 
of knowledge, books and libraries included, should sur- 
vive. These books and libraries would be like the old 
parrot mentioned by Humboldt, which spoke the language 
of a savage tribe that had ceased to exist. It is only in a 
secondary sense that there is knowledge in a book. What 
a book contains is not properly ideas, not properly even 
words, which are the signs of ideas, but merely the symbols 

* Isaac Casaubon, pp. 488, 489. 



THE ART OF HEADING. 69 

of words, the external and visible simulacra of thought ; 
and it is only when a mind like the mind of the author is 
brought into relation with it that the book becomes in- 
stinct with meaning. A book may be likened to a phono- 
graph, which speaks or sings only to an ear like the ear 
of him who first spoke the speech or sung the song. 

In his essay on Goethe's Helena, Carlyle shows how 
the reader becomes one with the author. " We have not 
read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it 
may be, as he saw it. Is it a matter of reasoning, and has 
he reasoned stupidly and falsely ? We should understand 
the circumstances which, to his mind, made it seem true, 
or persuaded him to write it, knowing that it was not so. 
In any other way we do him injustice if we judge him. 
Is it of poetry? His words are so many symbols, to which 
we ourselves must furnish the interpretation ; or they re- 
main, as in all prosaic minds the words of poetry ever do, 
a dead letter : indications they are, barren in themselves, 
but by following which we also may reach, or approach, that 
Hill of Vision where the poet stood, beholding the glorious 
scene which it is the purport of his poem to show others." 

Writing and reading are correlative arts ; either im- 
plies the other. When one stops to think of it, he begins 
to appreciate the greatness of the triumph that they involve. 
With a few strokes of his pen, the author transmits his 
thought around the world, or to a distant age. Through 
the printed page, the reader comes into relation with the 
men who have rammed the literatures with life. " It is 
the greatest invention that man has ever made," says Car- 
lyle, " this of marking down the thought that is in him 
by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, 
almost as marvellous as the first." It is not strange that 
a people so full of filial piety as the Chinese should rever- 
ence lettered paper. 
7 



70 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

While reading is the latest born of the great instru- 
ments of cultivation, it is in some ways the most impor- 
tant of all. Bjornson makes the mother of the hero of 
The Happy Boy say to her son that once the moun- 
tain spoke to the stream, the stream to the river, the 
river to the sea, and the sea to the sky, the sky to 
the clouds, the clouds to the trees, the trees to the grass, 
the grass to the flies, the flies to the animals, the animals 
to the children, the children to the grown-up people, and 
so on. Finally, she begins to teach him to read. He had 
owned books for a long time, and often wondered how it 
would seem when they also began to talk. Mr. Scudder 
uses the story to emphasize what he calls " the crisis of 
our educational system." This crisis is learning to read. 
" In making it possible for him [the child] to read books, 
we have added enormously to the power of the teacher. . . 
Of all times in the child's life when this company of in- 
visible spirits may be called in as interpreters, there is 
none more significant, more impressive than this, when, 
standing on the threshold, Avondering, listening, his im- 
agination sensitive to the finer influences, he waits to hear 
what his books shall say to him when they begin to 
talk." * 

* The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1894, p. 354 : The Educational 
Law of Reading and Writing. 



CHAPTER X. 

READING AND MENTAL CULTIVATION. 

School studies proper may be divided into three 
groups, the divisions being based on use or function. We 
must sketch out these groups, and also show the relation 
of reading to each one of them. 

1. The guidance studies furnish us with information 
or knowledge that is of immediate practical value in the 
work of life. This knowledge shapes, or at least influ- 
ences, our conduct. The terms " guidance " and " con- 
duct," however, must not be taken in a narrow sense. 
They must not be used in a merely moral acceptation, 
but in the sense of universal activity. In kind the 
knowledge that is derived from these studies is the same 
as the useful or practical information that is gathered by 
personal observation and reflection, by conversation, by 
reading the newspapers and books of general information. 
It has an encyclopsedic character, and has been called 
" fact lore." Indeed, information has sometimes been 
regarded, but very mistakenly, as the same thing as edu- 
cation. 

Extended remarks are not needed to show that the 
art of reading is very closely connected with this group 
of studies. It is well known to all teachers that in deal- 
ing with this whole group the good readers greatly sur- 
pass the poor ones. Teachers have often remarked to 
me, " My pupils are poor in geography and history be- 

71 



72 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

cause they can not read." It is the same way in physi- 
ology and elementary science, for in these studies the end 
sought is not so much mental discipline as it is informa- 
tion and the cultivation of the observing habit. In these 
studies the good readers surpass the poor ones, partly 
because they commonly surpass them in observation and 
apprehension, and partly because they surpass them in 
the art of reading itself. The mental qualities that cause 
a pupil to excel as a reader also cause him to excel in the 
information studies. As Bacon says, conference makes a 
ready man, v^riting an exact man, reading a full man. 

2. The disciplinary studies stimulate the observing 
and thinking faculties to action, and so develop the mind. 
They are sometimes called the " training studies." They 
tend to create thought rather than merely to furnish facts 
or ideas. As the studies of the first group give the mind 
knowledge, so these give it power. While the relation of 
reading to the disciplinary studies is less close than to the 
information studies, it is still important. 

Poor readers sometimes do good work in physics, 
chemistry, and mathematics, while good readers more fre- 
quently do poor work in the same studies ; but in both 
instances the rule is the other way. Pupils often come 
short in arithmetic or algebra because they have never 
formed the habit of carefully reading their examples, 
problems, and theorems. With such pupils it is some- 
times an advantage to cause them to analyze grammat- 
ically their lessons. The close relations of reading to the 
study of language, particularly on the literary side, are 
perfectly obvious. The mental qualities that make the 
good reader tend also to make the good translator. Poor 
readers rarely make good progress in the study of languages. 
Grammar will be made the subject of a future chapter, 
but a single i)hase of it may be mentioned here. G rammat- 



READING AND MENTAL CULTIVATION. 73 

ical analysis rests on logical analysis, on actually thinking 
an author's thoughts, and what is this but a form of read- 
ing ? Silent reading in interpreting to the mind the lan- 
guage-elements as they stand on the page, — words, phrases, 
clauses, and sentences ; oral reading adds to this the vocal 
expression that enables the listener to repeat the same 
process. Tlie basic element in both cases is a ceaseless pro- 
cess of defining, interpreting, and construing. The simi- 
larity between oral reading and analysis is even closer : 
the reader indicates the subject and the predicate of the 
sentence, as well as their modifiers, by the intonations, 
emphasis, and slides of his voice; the grammarian for- 
mally points out these elements by giving them their 
grammatical names. Eeading is rapid analysis without 
the formal designation of the elements ; analysis is slow 
reading with such designation. Still, all good readers do 
not excel in formal grammar ; some who have the literary 
faculty lack the logical power that analysis calls for. 

3. The culture studies supply tilth to the mind. The 
principal ones are the arts. Language as art is literature, 
a culture study. The difference between reading and the 
study of literature is partly one of kind, but mainly one 
of degree. The teacher of reading in the lower grades 
places more emphasis upon the mechanical or technical 
elements of the art than upon its spiritual elements ; in 
the higher grades, less emphasis upon the mechanical 
and more upon the spiritual ; while the teacher of litera- 
ture gives principal attention to the spiritual elements. 
Manifestly these are steps in the same line of development. 
Progressively, the art of reading passes into the study of 
literature. A school reader is a book of literature, as well 
as a practice book for teaching an art. A reader of high 
grade contains, or should contain, a variety of matter — 
descriptions of natural objects, elevated oratory, sublime, 



74: TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

tragical, and comic pieces, wise reasoning, humour, wit, 
pathos, poetic interpretation of Nature and scientific in- 
terpretation, history, food for the intellect and food for 
the heart, as well as tonic for the will. Fully to appre- 
ciate such a book calls for larger mental attainments than 
all the other books of the elementary school put together; 
to render its lessons well is the highest test of school cul- 
ture ; thoroughly to know its contents, next to association 
with a good teacher and cultivated pupils, is contact with 
the best formative influence of the school. The reader is 
pre-eminently the character-making and the taste-making 
book. It is the queen book of the elementary schoolroom. 

Of course, this division of studies, or any other one 
that can be propounded, lies open to criticism. The 
broadest of these criticisms is that the groups overlap one 
another. Information, disciplinary, and culture elements 
are found in every one of the three groups of studies — 
nay, in every study. As in other cases of classification, 
the names go with the emphatic characters. The dis- 
tinction' of information and disciplinary studies in par- 
ticular needs to be guarded. A man's knowledge and his 
discipline are not convertible terms, still less his knowl- 
edge and his education ; at the same time there is no 
knowledge that does not bring discipline, and no disci- 
pline apart from knowledge. 

While the above classification exhausts the school 
studies, it does not exhaust the sources of mental growth 
and culture. The mind is enriched from sources that do 
not bear the name of studies. Literature is one, conversa- 
tion another. In respect to language, in particular, liter- 
ature is very powerful. Imitation begins to exercise its 
potent spell the moment that the child begins to read a 
book with real interest. But imitation by no means ex- 
hausts the influence of either literature or association. 



READING AND MENTAL CULTIVATION. 75 

Imitation is at best a sort of copying, like the printing of 
a photograph ; but here we deal with a force that works 
from within and affects the whole mental being. A con- 
versation or a book, entering into a child's mind, brings 
new knowledge, incites thought and feeling, and enlarges 
the vocabulary and refines modes of speech. The intro- 
duction of new ideas, images, and feelings engenders new 
thought power and imparts new forms of expression. 
Speech grows and is clarified along with thought. The 
new spirit pushes off old modes and forms, as the spring 
sap causes the dead leaves to fall from the tree. The pro- 
cess is none the less efficacious because it is silent and 
somewhat slow. Use and wont do indeed create habits of 
speech that are almost incapable of change ; but, at the 
same time, reading and conversation renew a person's 
speech as waste and repair renew his skin. And it was 
this process of renewal that I referred to when, in a pre- 
vious chapter, I spoke of growing off or sloughing one's 
linguistic integument. 

It is not easy to exaggerate the linguistic influence of 
the books that have obtained a currency as wide as the 
language in which they are written, such as Milton, Bun- 
yan, Shakespeare, and, above all. King James's Bible. The 
influence of a few great models such as these, thoroughly 
read, is a hundredfold greater than that of all the gram- 
mars, dictionaries, rhetorics, and language books ever writ- 
ten. Eeference has already been made to the potent in- 
fluence of the school reader. It may be more than doubt- 
ful whether, with our habit of wide and careless reading, 
we are not at a disadvantage in respect to speech com- 
pared with our ancestors, who read more narrowly but 
more intensely. The newspaper is by no means an un- 
mixed blessing, while there is reason to question whether 
the higher school readers of to-day are equal in a literary 



Y6 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

point of view to those that were formerly in use. " We 
are apt," says Lowell, " to wonder at the scholarship of 
the men of three centuries ago, and at a certain dignity 
of phrase that characterizes them. They were scholars 
because they did not read so many things as we. They 
had fewer books, but these were of the best. Their speech 
was noble because they lunched with Plutarch and supped 
with Plato." * 

The primary teacher's first duty is to enlarge and clarify 
the child's mental store, rendering his facts, ideas, and 
thoughts more precise and definite, as well as more full 
and varied ; her second duty — and this begins at the same 
time and runs parallel with the former one — is to enlarge 
and clarify his vocabulary, adding to his stock of words 
and sharpening and guiding the senses in which he uses 
them. First and last the teacher's great instrument in 
the accomplishment of these ends is reading. The intel- 
ligent teacher will therefore hasten to lay hold of this 
great instrument of power. She will hasten to teach the 
pupil the art of reading ; she will strive to create within 
him a love of reading, and also to form a discriminating 
taste or judgment that is capable of separating what is 
worth reading from Avhat is not. The public schools of 
the United States cost the people not less than one hun- 
dred and seventy million dollars annually, but they would 
earn the money if they measurably accomplislied the three 
ends just stated, although they should do nothing more, 
viz., teach the children how to read and what to read, and 
give them a love of reading. Unfortunately, the difference 
between literature and printed matter is not always un- 
derstood. I should remark, however, that the relation of 
the reading habit to the intellectual and moral life is not 

* Literary and Political Addresses : Books and Libraries. 



READING AND MENTAL CULTIVATION. 77 

here emphasized so much as its relation to linguistic culti- 
vation. As a linguistic agent it ranks far above both the 
study of grammar and the technical devices of the school- 
room; it stands next to association itself — is, indeed, a 
form of association ; and is undoubtedly the most powerful 
linguistic agent that the teacher can use. It is too much 
to expect that the common person, habituated from birth 
to bad English, will ever learn to use the best English, 
but the ardent reader may accomplish wonders in that 
direction. 

What has been said of environment and good reading 
is of universal application. They are the two great meth- 
ods of teaching language. Neither one is peculiar to the 
schoolroom. No matter what a child's primal force may 
be, or what his acquired or inherited culture, he needs the 
discipline and the cultivation that come from good com- 
pany and good books. But the books must be graduated 
to the pupil and must be wisely handled. 

It is pertinent to observe that in England, at least at 
the universities, the words " read " and " reading " are 
used in a much broader sense than in the United States. 
To study is to read. The hard student is the hard reader. 
A difficult subject is hard reading. This broader usage 
marks the essential oneness of what we tend to divide. 
We do, indeed, say that a student reads law or theology, 
but this is no doubt due to the fact that under the old 
regime lawyers obtained their education in lawyers' offices, 
and ministers their theological training in pastors' studies. 
The introduction of the broader English usage into our 
schools might prove to be an advantage. 

Note. — In an admirable paragraph Mr. Lowell considers the ques- 
tion, "What the mere ability to read means." It is "the key 
which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and im- 
agination," " to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and 



78 TEACniNa THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment " ; " it enables us to see 
with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the 
sweetest voices of all time " ; " it annihilates time and space for us," 
and revives the age of wonder without a miracle. " We often hear 
of people," he says, '* who will descend to any servility, submit to 
any insult, for the sake of getting themselves or their children into 
what is euphemistically called good society. Did it ever occur to 
them that there is a select society of all the centuries to which they 
and theirs can be admitted for the asking — a society, too, which will 
not involve them in ruinous waste of time and health and facul- 
ties ? " — (Books and Libraries.) 

Prof. Norton is equally happy when he says : " Poetry is one of 
the most eflScient means of education of the moral sentiment, as 
well as of the intelligence. It is the source of the best culture. A 
man may know all science and yet remain uneducated. But let him 
truly possess himself of the work of any one of the great poets, 
and, no matter what else he may fail to know, he is not without 
education. 

" The field of good literature is so vast that there is something 
in it for every intelligence. But the field of bad literature is not 
less broad, and is likely to be preferred by the common, unculti- 
vated taste. To make good reading more attractive than bad, to 
give right direction to the choice, the growing intelligence of the 
child should be nourished with selected portions of the best litera- 
ture, the virtue of which has been approved by long consent. These 
selections, besides merit in point of literary form, should possess as 
general human interest as possible, and should be specially chosen 
with reference to the culture of the imagination. 

" The imagination is the supreme intellectual faculty, and yet it 
is of all the one which receives least attention in our common sys- 
tems of education. The reason is not far to seek. The imagina- 
tion is of all the faculties the most difficult to control, it is most 
elusive of all, the most far-reaching in its relations, the rarest in its 
full power. But upon its healthy development depend not only 
the sound exercise of the faculties of observation and judgment, 
but also the command of the reason, the control of the will, and 
the quickening and growth of the moral sympathies. The means 
for its culture which good reading affords is the most generally 
available and one of the most efficient." — (Preface to the Heart of 
Oak Books, Second Book.) 



CHAPTEE XL 

EEQUISITES rOK KEADIKG. 

IiT order that one may read in the sense that we have 
defined reading, he must possess three different qualifica- 
tions, viz. : — 

1. He must have a mental preparation — intellectual, 
emotional, and volitional — such as will enable him to re- 
ceive the knowledge, feeling, and purpose with which the 
composition that he reads is charged. 

2. He must be master of the mechanism or machinery 
of the printed page ; he must know the power and use, 
both singly and in combination, of the characters that are 
used in the expression or symbolism of written or printed 
thought. 

3. He must have a vocal or an elocutionary training 
that will enable him to convey to others by means of his 
voice what he himself finds on the printed page. Here it 
is that reading forms a connection with the earlier art of 
speaking. 

The first of these requisites is general and spiritual ; 
the second and third are special and mechanical. The 
first one sums up the whole of the reader's mental cultiva- 
tion, the other two constitute the technique, or the art, of 
reading. For silent reading, of course, only the first and 
second are necessary ; for oral reading the third is equally 
essential. 

Properly to teach reading due attention must be j)aid 

79 



80 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

to every one of these three requirements : To mental prep- 
aration in respect to subject-matter, to the apparatus of 
points, letters, words, and sentences, and to vocal drill or 
expression. While it wonld be too much to say that 
teachers as a class understand fully the second and third 
of these canons, they certainly understand them better 
than they do the first one. Some 'fail to understand what 
reading is ; they appear to assume that it is the mere play 
of the vocal organs, the simple utterance of language. 
Chinese youth, for example, in the first period of school 
life, commit to memory, and learn to recite with faultless 
utterance. The Five Classics and The Four Books, from 
which, as the oral and literary languages of the country 
are wholly different, they do not receive a glimmer of an 
idea. Later they are taught the literary language ; but 
in this first period, according to the purely mechanical 
conception, they are the most accomplished readers in the 
world. 

Unfortunately, the relation of the art of reading to 
mental cultivation as a whole is not always understood. 
It is an effect as well as a cause of such cultivation. Wo 
learn in order to read, as well as read in order to learn. 
No man's knowledge ever began, or ever will begin, with 
reading. Before we ever read a word we have accumu- 
lated, by the use of the senses and by reflection, a stock of 
facts, ideas, and images without which we could never read 
at all. Later in life words often come before things or 
ideas, but at first things must come before words. Nor 
can we grow in power to read unless we keep in relation 
constantly with the original sources of knowledge. Pro- 
fessor J. S. Blackie has remarked that while, in modern 
times, instruction is communicated by means of books, 
and while they are very useful helps to knowledge, and 
even to the practice of useful arts, still they are never the 



REQUISITES FOR READING. 81 

primary and natural sources of culture, and their virtue is 
apt to be overrated. They are not creative powers in 
any sense; they are merely helps, instruments, or tools, 
and even as tools they are artificial, superadded to those 
with which the wise prevision of Nature has equipped 
us. " The original and proper sources of knowledge are 
not books, but life, experience, personal thinking, feeling, 
and acting. When a man starts with these, books can 
fill up many gaps, correct much that is inaccurate, and 
extend much that is inadequate ; but, without living ex- 
perience to work on, books are like rain and sunshine 
fallen on unbroken soil." Hence the Scotch profegsor 
urges his young readers to cultivate the direct observation 
of facts, and not to be content with cultivating books. * It 
is indeed to be said that words in themselves are things 
as much as material objects, and that as such they may be 
made the subject of study, but this is apart from their 
primitive function as signs of ideas and as vehicles of 
thought. 

After all that has been said and written, teachers do 
not yet sufficiently appreciate the bearing of what we al- 
ready know upon what we have yet to learn. At first the 
mind looks at objects directly and impartially ; there in- 
tervenes between it and its object no medium or prism of 
ideas or previous mental experience; so that there is a 
native innocency of the mind as well as of the eye. But 
this virgin state of mind does not last long. The first- 
formed ideas condition all later ones. They become types, 
forms, or cadres to which new objects are referred. " For 
wherever it is at all possible," as has been said, "the child 
refers the new to the related older ideas. With the aid of 
familiar perceptions, he appropriates that which is foreign 

* Self-Culture : The Culture of the Intellect. 



82 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

to him, and conquers witli the arms of apperception the 
outer world which assails his senses." * Thus the child 
reared up in the south brought north may call snowflakes 
butterflies, while any child for a period calls every man a 
papa, every woman a mamma. When the Romans first 
sjiw elephants they called them Lucanian oxen. The word 
Hanclscliuli shows that the Germans clothed their feet be- 
fore they did their hands. Old ideas affect new ones in 
two ways — they facilitate their formation and also shape 
them. Nothing but fuller experience can correct the 
hasty and overwide generalizations that are so character- 
istic of young and immature minds. But, on the whole, 
the resulting advantages are very great ; we may even say 
that they measure all gain or increase of mental j)ower. 
Thus it is that, other things being equal, those who know 
most already are the best fitted to learn. The people who 
saw most at the Columbian Exposition were the people who 
carried most to it. The Eskimos of the story found noth- 
ing to interest them in the streets of London.f Apper- 
ception conditions all mental growth after the first begin- 
ning is made, and so is of universal value ; but there are 
reasons why the fact should be especially borne in mind 
when the immediate source or channel of knowledge is 
a book. 

We have already seen that, to a degree, the reader 
must liave one life with the author ; that he must be able 
measurably to think his thoughts, feel his emotions, and 
will his purposes. He need not stand on as high a plane 
as the author, but he must not fall too far below him. 

* Lange, Anperception, p. 55, Boston, 1803. 

f For examples of apperception, sec Tracy, The Psycliolocfy of 
('liildliood, p. 45; Taine, Tlie Acquisition of Ijant^njijj^e by Children, 
Mind, vol. ii, p. 255 ; Lange, Apperception (Boston, 1803), pp. 55, 56; 
Do Garino, The Essentials of Method, [). 30. 



IIEQUISITES FOR READING. 83 

No one can really read Shakespeare or Milton unless he 
he have something Shakespearian or Miltonic in him. 
School readers must be graduated to the culture of the 
pupils who are to use them ; they must be above the 
pupils, but not too far above them, for if they abound in 
facts, ideas, and images that the pupils have not in mind, 
or their similars, the pupils will not receive much profit, 
although they may mechanically learn some new words 
or language. We read as well as reason from what we 
already know. 

To read different authors, different compositions by 
the same author, or even parts of the same composition, 
may call for different kinds of preparation. One author 
or piece moves in the field of Nature ; a second traverses 
history and literature ; a third is introspective and meta- 
physical ; a fourth combines facts, reflections, and images 
coming from several sources. A man whose reading and 
thought have lain in the channel of human affairs solely, 
does not find tongues in trees, sermons in stones, books in 
the running brooks, and good in everything. Nor will 
he who has dwelt only in the presence of Nature read- 
ily thread the mazes of history. Take this stanza from 
Tennyson : 

" The rain had fallen, the poet arose, 

He passed by the town and out of the street ; 
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, 
And waves of shadow went over the wheat." 

It is hardly necessary to say that the ideas which enable 
one to appreciate these lines come from personal con- 
tact with Nature. It is labour lost to speak of waves of 
shadow on a wheat field to one who has never seen them, 
or something like them. Now, take the following from 
Macaulay : 

"Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes 



84 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

which we have described. He was not a Puritan. He was 
not a Freethinker. He was not a Cavalier. In his charac- 
ter the noblest qualities of every party were combined in 
harmonious union. From the parliament and from the 
court, from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, 
from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Eoundheads, 
and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable Cavalier, 
his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great 
and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious 
ingredients by which those fine elements were defiled." 

This passage does not call for knowledge of Nature, but 
for knowledge of man ; and no one can read it with ap- 
preciation without a large knowledge of English history 
in the seventeenth century. Who was the Puritan ? who 
the Freethinker? who the Cavalier? What was the con- 
venticle and what the Gothic cloister ? And what were 
the elements, great and good, which Milton's nature se- 
lected and drew to itself from all these sources ? 

Gray's Elegy moves in a different sphere still. Its 
note is personal refiection on Nature and human life: 
it is marked by a sweet pensiveness. 

Then what a mingling of ideas in the well-known 
lines of Hamlet : 

" Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes 
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, 
The bird of dawning singeth all night long ; 
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad. 
The nights arc wholesome ; then no planets strike, 
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, 
So hallowed and so gracious is the time." 

The import of the argument is that reading calls for a 
certain general culture — that man or child must read up 
to elevated literature, just as a musician must sing up to 
elevated music. Perliaps it is needless to say that the 



REQUISITES FOR READING. 85 

reading in the scliools falls far below this level. And not 
only so, what passes for reading in churches, Sunday 
schools, and homes is often merely naming words. 

The proper preparation of the mind for reading comes 
from many sources — personal observation of Nature and 
personal contact with men, previous acquaintance with 
books, and reflection upon what one has seen and heard. 
Of all these sources Nature contributes to the child's mind 
the most valuable facts, ideas, and images. 

" God made the country, 
Man made the town." 

Hunting for the spring flowers, chasing with the eye the 
shadows on the wheat, watching the flight of birds, noting 
the golden lustre of the grain at harvest ; observing the 
habits of animals, wild and domestic, the qualities of phys- 
ical things, the forest in summer and in winter, the clouds, 
and the changes of the seasons — these causes work lasting 
impressions in the young, and particularly in brooding 
minds. It is because the compilers of school readers feel 
this that they give so much prominence to lessons dealing 
with natural scenes. Moreover, we do not always suffi- 
ciently consider how much more nearly upon a level with 
these books the country child is than the city child, and 
how much better furnished he is with the apparatus re- 
quired to interpret such lessons. 

On the whole, when we consider how much cultivation 
it involves, we cease to think the remark extravagant that 
to read John Euskin is a liberal education. 



CHAPTER XIL 

TEACHIK'G READING AS AK AET. 

"We must keep clearly in mind the preparation to read 
that the child who has never looked into a book brings to 
school. First, he has a certain store of facts, ideas, and 
images gained by observation, reflection, and conversation, 
which serves to interpret to him, through the process 
called apperception, the new facts and ideas of the printed 
page — the extent and nature of this preparation depend- 
ing upon the quickness of his mind, the character of his 
environment, natural and social, and particularly upon 
the cultivation of his home. Secondly, he has at com- 
mand a certain store of oral language by which he both 
receives and conveys ideas, which preparation is also rela- 
tive in both quantity and quality, being determined by 
the activity of his mind and the speech that he is accus- 
tomed to hear. The primary teacher's first duty is to 
take the child thus equipped and to teach him to read. 
She should be guided by the following canons : — 

1. The pupil must at once attack the symbolism of 
the printed page. This consists of arbitrary characters 
combined in a great number and variety of ways. The 
first step toward reading is to learn to recognise these 
characters, both singly and in combination. This is in 
great part a mechanical-mental operation, in which suc- 
cess depends mainly upon natural quickness of mind and 
practice. It is an art in itself. The question of method, 

86 



TEACHING READING AS AN ART. 87 

it does not come in my way to discuss ; the canons that I 
am laying down apply, no matter what method is used. 
There is reason to think, however, that the method is not 
so important as some would make it ; more, probably, de- 
pends upon the skill with which it is handled than the 
method itself ; or, at least, reading has been successfully 
taught according to all the methods that have been in 
vogue. Accordingly, the expression " singly and in com- 
bination " used above does not imply that such should be 
the order of procedure, but that the completed work must 
embrace both the items. 

2. The pupil will at the same time attack the vocal 
values of these characters, also singly and in combination. 
The word or letter has a form that appeals to the eye, and 
a name or sound that appeals to the ear ; in fact, some 
letters have several sounds or, in reality, several names. 
The form and the name are in no way related save by ex- 
ternal association ; the form does not control the sound, 
or vice versa. This also is an art ; it involves the associa- 
tion of the sound and the form with the ability to make 
the sound. Both acts are in great degree mechanical. 
Excellence in the first implies quick observation and re- 
tentive memory, particularly memory for sounds; excel- 
lence in the second, flexible vocal organs and much prac- 
tice. 

Mastery of tlie printed symbols employed in literature, 
and of their vocal values, are the technical elements of the 
art of reading. They are to reading what technique is 
to music. They should advance together. Furthermore, 
they should receive marked emphasis in the school for some 
time after the child enters it, say for two or three years. 

The acquirement of the elements of the art of reading 
may in after-years seem easy ; the fact is, however, it is 
difficult, and it will be called easy only by those who do 



88 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

not understand what it involves or who have forgotten 
their own early struggles. The two elements are not only 
to be acquired, but they are to be associated — the recog- 
nition of the symbols and the utterance of their vocal 
powers. Dr. Stanley Hall has thus characterized read- 
ing : " In fine, the growing agreement that there is no 
one and only orthodox way of teaching and learning 
this greatest and hardest of all the arts, in which ear, 
mouth, eye, and hand must each in turn train the others 
to automatic perfection in ways hard and easy, by devices 
old and new, mechanically and consciously, actively and 
passively, of things familiar and unknown, and by alter- 
nately resting and modulating from one set of faculties 
to another, secure mental unity and school economy both 
intellectual and material — this is a great gain and seems 
now secure." * 

3. On the day that he enters the school the pupil 
should also attack the significance of the literary symbols. 
Originally these symbols, whether considered as forms or 
as sounds, had little to do with meaning ; for the most 
part the meanings of words in any language which has 
reached the written stage are arbitrary. Good care must 
be taken that the meanings of the first words, or thought- 
symbols, that are used in teaching reading, shall be already 
familiar. No words or language should be employed the 
content of which the pupil does not already well under- 
stand. The thing immediately in hand is to associate the 
meanings and the forms of the symbols, and this must be 
accomplished mainly by sheer dint of practice. To this 
extent the act is mechanical-mental ; but the meanings 
themselves, especially as they flow into a stream of thought, 
are purely psychological. This brings us back to the 

* Ilow to Teach Reading, p. 15. 



TEACHING READINa AS AN ART. 89 

original analysis. Reading involves (1) recognition of the 
printed symbols ; (2) ability to exjoress their sound equiv- 
alents; (3) understanding of the subject-matter. To illus- 
trate, " cat " or " lion " as form, as sound, and as idea are 
distinct and separate, and nothing but convention has 
brought the three elements into connection. To read, 
therefore, one must observe the convention. Obviously, 
the first and second elements of the whole art may be ac- 
quired by themselves, as in the case of Chinese school- 
boys ; the second may fall out altogether, as in the case of 
the deaf-mute reader ; while the third, although not essen- 
tial to the second, gives to it that peculiar quality which 
we call expression. Nor will it be amiss to say again that 
the^ psychological element only is of the essence of read- 
ing. The emphasis laid upon the mechanical elements in 
the first grade, the fact that at first the reading lesson as 
such can not add anything to the child's real knowledge 
outside of the art of reading itself considered as an object 
— since the lessons must be strictly limited to what the 
child already knows — these two facts for a time throw the 
content of language into the background. At first, read- 
ing is psychological (properly so called) only in so far as 
it involves permanent associations of the three several ele- 
ments, the most important associations being those be- 
tween the old ideas and the corresponding word-forms. 
Not until reading as a mechanical-mental art has been 
measurably mastered — that is, not until the child has 
measurably learned to " read " in the accepted sense of the 
home and of the school — does it become an instrument or 
tool for the acquisition of new knowledge. To convey 
knowledge at first through reading, strictly speaking, is 
impossible. The fact is, that if all the time which is spent 
in teaching the pupil to read as a mere art were devoted 
to enlarging his real knowledge or mental store by plying 



90 TEACillNQ THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

his faculties of observation with objects, and through con- 
versation, he would know more at the end of a year of 
school life than he now knows. To be sure, the art itself 
contains objects of real knowledge, though of little value 
abstractly considered, and also confers discipline ; still, 
from the point of view of real knowledge the time so 
spent is mainly wasted. But this waste we gladly incur, 
since this incomparable instrument of acquirement, when 
once gained, is a hundredfold compensation. Accord- 
ingly, more and more emphasis must be placed upon the 
content of language as the child ascends the grades, until 
at last the art of reading is merged in the study of liter- 
ature. 

It is not improbable that some will object to the minor 
stress laid upon the thought-element in the first stage of 
teaching reading. Such fail to understand that the first 
thing to do is to master a mechanical-mental art — they 
fail to see that the tool must first be fabricated before it 
can be used. The pupil should indeed be caused to un- 
derstand the ideas that the exercise or lesson holds ; but 
all attempts to do more, for the time, will not only fail to 
enlarge real knowledge, through reading^ but will retard 
the formation of the art. A lesson in reading and an 
object-lesson may be combined in one ; the child may 
get, in the first stage, new ideas at the same time that he 
acquires his art ; but the new ideas come from the object- 
lesson and not from the reading as such. To quote Dr. 
Hall again : 

" Children are so automatic and imitative, have such a 
genius for the facile acquisitions of habit, and are so easily 
stupefied by reasons and explanations, that some seem 
to learn to read and write so mechanically as to get by 
it no trace whatever of real mental discipline or devel- 
opment. The sooner all these processes are completely 



TEACHING READING AS AN ART. 91 

mechanized, so that reading is rapid, sure, and free, the 
sooner the mind can attend to the subject-matter. Till 
then, Benecke thought reading and writing a necessary- 
evil, and that processes so mechanical and arbitrary 
should be taught mechanically and arbitrarily, hoping 
for a time when children should be born w^ith the spell- 
ing-mechanism innate and instinctively perfect in their 
brains." * 

The teacher must remember that oral reading is a 
form of speech, or of talking, and that imitation is the key 
word in one as in the other. Eules should play no more 
part in primary reading than in talking. The teacher 
should not say, " Follow such a rule," but " Do so," setting 
an appropriate example. A poor reader is little likely to 
make good ones. The attempt to cause the child to fol- 
low rules will breed confusion of mind and prevent that 
freedom and spontaneity which are the first marks of 
good reading, as they are of good talking. Even the ob- 
servance of punctuation marks should come by habit or 
practice, and should be instinctive rather than reflective 
and self-conscious. The rules found in Noah Webster's 
spelling book, " Stop at a period long enough to count 
six," etc., are altogether absurd. On this point Quintilian 
is a safe guide. "As to reading," he says, "practice 
alone can inform the young gentleman where he ought 
to take breath ; where he is to lay the accent in a line ; 
where he is to finish one period or begin another ; when 
he is to raise or when to lower his voice, and at every 
turn to know when to speak quick or slow, with spirit or 
with softness." Upon this head he recommends one gen- 
eral rule in order to enable the boy to do all that has 
been mentioned, which is, " Let him understand what he 

* How to Teach Reading, pp. 13, 14. 



92 TEACHINa THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

reads." The ease or difficulty with which children learn 
to read, in the real sense of the word, differs greatly with 
different children. Much depends upon Nature and 
much upon environment. Quick-witted children brought 
up in intelligent homes, where they hear from birth good 
reading and talking, will, under good tuition, learn to 
read almost as naturally as a thrush learns to sing. Mr. 
Scudder questions whether Dogberry " did not stumble 
upon a truth, and narrowly graze a most profound maxim," 
when he exclaimed, " To write and read comes by nature ! " 
There can be small doubt that reading aloud is much 
less practised in good homes now than it was formerly, 
when reading matter was less abundant. Conversation 
has been called a lost art ; perhaps reading aloud is quite 
as much so. At all events, reading aloud in the family 
is almost as helpful to children learning to read as talk- 
ing in the family is to children who are learning to talk. 
Professor Dowden remarks : " Few persons nowadays seem 
to feel how powerful an instrument of culture can be 
found in modest, intelligent, and sympathetic reading 
aloud." He makes a justifiable attack on " the reciter 
and the elocutionist," who " of late have done so much 
to rob us of this, which is one of the finest of the fine 
arts," * but says nothing about the decay of the habit of 
reading aloud, which is a still more observable fact, and 
one still more to be regretted. Professor Corson contends 
earnestly for the cultivation of the reading voice. Urging 
his favourite thesis in respect to vocal cultivation he says : 
" How much, the charm of beauty's powerful glance, may be 
heightened or reduced by the character of the voice which 
goes along with it ! A woman with a sweet and gracious 
voice can exert through it in the ordinary relations of life, 
without even knowing it, a better influence than she could 

* New Studies in Literature, pp. 431, 432. 



TEACHING READING AS AN ART. 93 

by distributing religious tracts. The moral atmosphere 
of a home may be not a little due to the voice of the wife 
and mother. The mere memory of a voice which was 
toned by love and sympathy may continue to be a sweet 
influence long after the voice itself has been hushed in 
death. The influence of the voice for good or evil, in the 
domestic, social, and all other relations of life, can not be 
estimated. A voice may even have a good or bad reflex 
action upon its possessor." * 

Note. — Mr. George Ticknor, when studying in Germany, wrote 
to his father that he was in the habit of reciting German to his 
teacher and of reading aloud to him in some book which required 
some considerable exertion of the voice. This the father, Mr. 
Elisha Ticknor, approved, but added these suggestions, which will 
bear quotation : 

" It is not of so much importance for you to read aloud to a 
German as it is that a German should read aloud to you. Select 
one of the finest oratorical readers in Gottingen, whose voice is 
round, and full, and melodious. Place yourself twenty feet from 
hira, if possible. Request him to select and read aloud to you a 
pathetic oratorical piece in German — such a piece, if possible, as 
will command all the powers of speech and eloquence. . . . Twenty 
pieces thus read to you by him, and in turn by you to him, in his 
tone of voice, would do you ten, twenty, yes, thirty times as much 
good as it would for you to read to him first, and in the common way, 
at common distance, and in common language. It is the tone of 
the voice, and the attitude of a polished German scholar, which you 
need to be able to read and speak German well, like a German gentle- 
man and scholar. Do the same in Paris, in Rome, in London, and 
what you will hear and see otherwise at the bar, and from the pulpit, 
and in common conversation, without any particular exertion of 
your own, will be sufficient to answer all your purposes and all my 
expectations, which are but few, although you may think they are 
many." — (Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, vol. ii, p. 
503.) 

* The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1895, p. 815. See also his Aims 
of Literary Study, pp. 129, 130. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. 

The phrase " to teach one to read," as we have seen, 
may express either one of two ideas. It may mean to 
teach a mechanical-mental art, the use of a mere tool, or 
it may mean the employment of this art or tool to unlock 
the mysteries of the printed page. While the two mean- 
ings are closely connected, they can still be separated in 
thought and also in practice. The second, it is hardly 
necessary to remark, is the higher meaning ; it is the end 
to which all instruction in the art or mechanism of read- 
ing should be directed. When thus employed, the stu- 
dent's attention is no longer fixed on the mere art ; the 
use of the tool has become mainly automatic, while the 
matter of the page absorbs the mind. Having in the 
last chapter said all I deem it necessary to say about the 
mechanical aspect of the subject, we must now consider 
the thought aspect. 

And, first, much that has been said about the language- 
arts in general applies to reading as thought — so difficult 
is it, or rather impossible, to separate the two subjects. 
This close relationship, while it lightens the work of the 
teacher, rather embarrasses the writer who attempts to 
describe the work, making more or less repetition inevi- 
table. The following are the points that need to be par- 
ticularly observed : — 

1. At the very first, teaching reading presents, or 

94 



TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. 95 

should present, but one phase. The child can do nothing 
alone, and the teacher must work with him as well asfo?' 
him. There is no such thing as preparation or study 
apart from the reading exercises, or rather everything is 
preparation for reading in the future. The single exer- 
cise, commonly given on the blackboard or the chart, is 
wholly homogeneous. Therefore, when the teacher stops 
everything stops. These remarks apply to the mechanical 
side as well as to the thought side of the subject. 

2. Soon, however, the work will begin to differentiate. 
The first step in this direction will be the tendency to 
make two exercises — one preparation or study of the les- 
son, and the other reading it ; and both will be taken 
under the teacher's immediate leadership. This division, 
begun but slowly, will in time be distinctly recognised. 
The preparation will include the substance of all the ele- 
ments of composition — words, sentences, and paragraphs. 
The next step in the evolution is the student's own in- 
dependent work on the lesson. Gradually he will win 
standing-ground, and as he does so the teacher will throw 
him more and more on his own resources. First will 
come the so-called " silent reading " of the lower primary 
grades, to be followed in time by the so-called " study " of 
the higher grades. The pupil's own independent work 
may sometimes follow and sometimes precede the study of 
the lesson in the class. This third step taken, all the forms 
of exercise used in teaching reading are present. Supple- 
mentary reading deals only with a special class of reading 
matter. 

3. Independent work by the pupil involves the assign- 
ment of a lesson. Particular care must be taken that the 
lessons assigned shall be on the pupil's level of knowledge 
and language. The successive lessons will contain new 
words and new ideas, otherwise there will be no progress; 



96 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

but any lessou is on the pupil's level in case he can rise to 
it with reasonable assistance from the teacher. 

4. In assigning a new lesson the teacher should, as a 
rule, first tell the young children what it is about, and par- 
ticularly if the subject is a new and unfamiliar one. More 
than this, she should direct attention to the difficult parts 
of the lesson, also, as the meaning and pronunciation of 
new words, and the force of particular expressions. In 
early lessons all new words should be put on the black- 
board and be explained, both phonetically and as signs 
of ideas. 

5. From the time that they are able to do so, pupils 
should be required to study their lessons in advance of the 
class exercise. Increasing stress must be laid on this 
feature of the work, as the direct participation of the 
teacher in the preparation of the lesson is withdrawn. 
There is reason to fear that many pupils, after they have 
made a fair beginning in reading, do not think such study 
necessary. They understand that they must prepare the 
lessons in arithmetic, grammar, geography, etc., but the 
reading lessons — why, that is merely so much time in the 
class ! This is one point where the teacher will find it 
necessary to resist the steady pressure of the more ad- 
vanced pupils. The ordinary reading exercise calls for 
preparation as much as any other exercise that can be 
named. In the words of a German writer : 

" Before the child begins to read, it must know what 
it is going to read about. The pupil must read with at- 
tention and with interest which the teacher has excited 
before the reading begins. The difficulties also which 
would interfere with the interest must be removed before- 
hand. Everything most necessary to a good understand- 
ing of the subject should be explained at the outset, and 
not at the end when the best impressions are effaced. 



TExVCHIXG READING AS THOUGHT. 97 

The teacher must connect every new reading lesson with 
the sense perceptions already obtained, or with what has 
already been read, and thereby make it comprehensible." * 
6. The teacher in the higher grades and in the high 
school will find it advantageous, as frequently as possible, 
to study a lesson with the class. Such study should occa- 
sionally be conducted on the intensive plan. Grammatical 
questions may be introduced, and every pains should be 
taken to illustrate the composition or passage. Obser- 
vation has taught me that pupils often, if not indeed 
generally, fail to take full views of reading lessons. While 
the sentences may be understood one by one, the larger 
units that they compose are not grasped. If the passage 
is argument or reasoning, it is not thought out ; if it is 
description, the imagination does not work out the picture. 
To a great extent, of course, these imperfect views are in- 
cident to the immature minds of pupils. Then short 
and imperfect views are due in part to the school readers. 
The readers are made up mainly of pieces and fragments, 
and the complete compositions found in them are com- 
monly few and always short. In books prepared for early 
grades this is, no doubt, necessary ; nor can it be wholly 
avoided in the more advanced books. Ko doubt the 
school reader must be a more or less chopped-up com- 
pilation ; at the same time it is very desirable that the 
pupil shall become thoroughly familiar with complete and 
considerably extended compositions. The evil that the 
readers entail may be corrected through supplementary 
reading and literature. I approve the method recom- 
mended by the Conference on English to the Committee 
of Ten. " From the beginning of the third year at school, 
the pupil should be required to supplement his regular 

* Cuttmarm, quoted by Lange : Apperception, p. 210. 



98 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

reading-book with other reading matter of a distinctly 
literary kind. At the beginning of the seventh school 
year the reading-book may be discarded, and the pnpil 
should henceforth read literature — prose and narrative 
poetry in about equal parts. Complete works should 
usually be studied. When extracts must be resorted to, 
these should be long enough to possess a unity of their 
own, and to serve as a fair specimen of an author's style 
and method." * 

7. Constant efforts must be made to connect the read- 
ing lesson with all other available sources of cultivation. 
The teacher should appeal to the pupil's own personal ob- 
servation and reflection, the new ideas should be integrated 
with old ones, and pains be taken to unite the reading 
with the other studies, and particularly with history and 
geography. The newspaper and magazine, the cyclopaedia 
and dictionary, and, above all, books of general literature, 
are invaluable helps. In other words, the teaching must 
be on the intensive plan. Professor Laurie remarks that 
" the question of method at this stage resolves itself very 
much into this : How shall we best use the reading lesson 
as a lesson in language and through language in the hu- 
manities? Here more than anywhere else the cultiva- 
tion, the knowledge, the sympathy, the imagination, the 
educative skill of a teacher show themselves. The read- 
ing lesson is the common ground on which the true mind 
of master and pupil meet." f This is well said, but a ques- 
tion almost equally important is, How shall we best use 
language as a lesson in reading and through reading in 
the humanities? 

8. Mention of the dictionary suggests another topic 

* Report of the Committee on Secondary School Studies, p. 89. 
Washington, 1892. f Page 32. 



TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. 99 

that demands fuller treatment, viz., definitions. Mean- 
ings of words are the keys to the printed page. Still, 
the study of meanings is not just the same thing as the 
study of definitions. It is true, paradoxical as it may 
appear, that a reader may grasp the thought of a passage 
as a whole when he can not define all the words one by 
one, or does not even understand them all ; it is equally 
true that he may define and understand the words one by 
one and fail to grasp the whole thought. The mind may 
take either one of two views, both of which are harmful 
when carried too far : it may overlook small points in the 
general drift or substance of the passage, or it may be so 
intent on small points that it fails altogether to grasp 
the drift or substance. 

A definition does not add to one's real knowledge 
unless it connects itself with something that he already 
knows. It must go back to some real or vital element 
in his mind. The growth of knowledge is a process of 
grafting a new fact or new idea into an old one ; * the 
scion draws its sap, life, and growth from the stock in 
which it is set ; and to bring a fact or an idea to a mind 
having no kindred fact or idea is no less futile than it 
would be to set a graft in a branch of a dead tree. 

Further, a definition consists of two parts — the generic 
part and the characteristic, specific, or differencing part. 
Thus, a " map is a picture " (the generic part) " of the 
whole or a part of the earth's surface" (the character- 
istic). A good definition always refers the object defined 
to its genus, and then points out wherein it differs from 
other objects or species belonging to the same genus. We 
must have some idea of both of these parts in order to 
learn anything. When you tell a child that a " calabash 

* " Heceive with meekness the engrafted word " (James i, 21). 



100 TEACHING THE LANGUxiGE-ARTS. 

is a vessel made of a gourd," yoii add to his knowledge 
provided he already knows what a vessel is, and a gourd ; 
but if he is ignorant of both these things you give him 
merely a new word, or if he is ignorant of one of them you 
merely give him half an idea. 

The point just made must be carefully guarded. The 
small dictionaries, which give short definitions without il- 
lustrative examples, often prove snares to the feet of both 
pupils and teachers. Teaching definitions from the school 
reader may even be a harmful process. The pupil may 
recite his definitions glibly, when a little questioning 
will reveal the fact that he has committed to memory 
some strings of words soon to be forgotten. To define a 
cent as " one hundredth part of a dollar," and then a dol- 
lar as " one hundred cents," is merely to run around a 
small circle. Too much pains can not be taken to bring 
definitions into relation with real things, natural or men- 
tal, as the case may be. Mr. Marsh is right in contend- 
ing that there is a large and increasing part of all mod- 
ern vocabularies which can be comprehended only by the 
observation of Nature and scientific experiment — in short, 
by the study of things. 

Another point may be mentioned. It is an invariable 
rule that, in defining a word, no form of the same word 
should be employed, as a verb or adjective in defining a 
noun. To say that creeping is " what a baby does when 
it creeps " is not to give a definition at all, not even a ver- 
bal one. That much of this kind of work is done in the 
schools, is well known to competent observers. 

Words should be studied both in literature and in the 
dictionary. Either kind of study checks the other. One 
is to study the word in itself, the other in sitti. A geo- 
logical or botanical specimen in a museum is not what 
it is when found in Nature. The boy who said " an aver- 



TEACHING READING AS TnOUGIIT. 101 

age is something that a hen lays an egg on," had evi- 
dently seen the word " average " in a sentence ; while 
the boy who framed the sentence, " John came over the 
sea in a capillary," had evidently hunted up the word 
"capillary" in the dictionary. In reading, thought is 
obtained by successive strokes of analysis rather than by 
synthetic construction ; the mind breaks into the com- 
position, so to speak, and does not build it up from the 
letters, syllables, and words ; and commonly the questions. 
What is the force of this expression ? or What idea do 
you get from that language? are more useful than the 
questions. What is the meaning of this word or that one? 
While it would be untrue to say that the idea should 
always come before the word, we are not to forget that 
the primal order of mental growth is real knowledge 
before verbal knowledge. 

9. The teacher should question the class about the les- 
son before reading it. First should come some general 
questions about the subject and scope of the lesson, which 
should never be answered in the words of the title. Then 
should follow more definite questions appropriate to the 
subject-matter : " What did John say ? " " What kind of 
a coat did the beggar wear ? " " Describe the house that 
the man lived in." " Give an account of the performances 
of the dog." 

10. The teacher should frequently require of her pupils 
summaries of portions of the lesson, both before and after 
reading in the class. Also, general accounts or descrip- 
tions of the whole lesson. Oral paraphrases of selected 
parts will re-enforce the work in language. Such exercises 
show how well the lesson has been prepared and how 
thoroughly it is understood. 

How far the teacher should go in questioning on the 
meaning of a reading lesson, must be determined at the 
9 



102 TExiCHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

time upon tlie spot. Nor is it easy to determine the ques- 
tion then and there. If questions are unduly multiplied 
the exercise is slow and tedious, and pupils are discour- 
aged ; they think the teacher does not give them credit 
for knowing anything. On the other hand, if too few are 
asked, the lesson will not be understood. It is not always 
the case that the commonest things are the things that 
the child understands the best. Pupils can be found who 
can explain " the curfew tolls " of Gray's Elegy, who can 
not explain the line — 

" The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea." 

I have found pupils reading The Village Blacksmith who 
had no idea what the word " smithy " means. In this re- 
gard the environment and reading of the pupil are of 
course prime factors. Children sometimes show great 
unconscious ingenuity in answering questions. A pupil 
of my acquaintance explained the line, 

" Once again his horn he wound," 

to mean that the possessor of the horn wrapped it round 
with yarn. I have been told by three schoolboys in suc- 
cession, eleven years of age, that the firmament is a place 
like the poorhouse, that it is green pastures, and that it 
is old cider. The mal apropos answers to questions that 
constitute the material of Miss Le Eow's well-known 
book, English as She is Taught, are perfectly character- 
istic of children, and they teach two important lessons. 
Many of these answers are naturally incident to immature 
minds, and must be corrected by time and experience ; 
but others flow from bad teaching. Teachers have as- 
sumed that their pupils understand what they do not un- 
derstand, and so have withheld their instruction, or they 
have not been clear in their instruction. Every person 
who is accustomed carefully to examine the contents of 



TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. 103 

pupils' minds knows how meagre, how incomplete, how 
confused their ideas are. In large measure children must 
groiu out of their imperfect knowledge, and can not be 
taught out of it. Clearness and fulness are relative 
terms. 

One important caution must be added. To take 
up so much time in prejmring to read that little or no 
reading is done, is a fatal mistake, and one easily and 
often committed. There must be reading, and plenty 
of it. 

Incidentally school readers have been mentioned more 
than once in these pages. We may recur to them in this 
place, for they are immediately connected both with teach- 
ing reading and teaching literature. 

One point to be guarded in the compilation of a series 
of school readers, and particularly those for the more ad- 
vanced grades, is the length and unity of the lessons, and 
another the literary quality of the lessons. Touching the 
first of these questions, again, two things should be said. 
One is that the practice of introducing masterpieces into 
the schools is a good one. The benefit attending the 
reading of whole compositions, and especially composi- 
tions of considerable length, is unmistakable. In this 
way the mind acquires a discipline in dealing with large 
subjects, in mastering the connections of thought, in see- 
ing the bearings of things and the dependency of parts, 
which it can never gain from short or fragmentary compo- 
sitions. Still, due preparation for this work must be first 
made. Short compositions must come before long ones. 
And, most fortunately, there is plenty of admirable mate- 
rial for the purpose. There are single poems and prose 
lessons, units in themselves, masterpieces in a word, which 
are as complete and perfect of their kind as the longer 
masterpieces of the language. Moreover, plenty of ma- 



104 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

teriiil can bo found in longer works ; that is, complete 
poems and prose exercises, marked by perfect unity and 
artistic perfection in themselves, can bo found in the 
pages of all the great masters of verse and prose. Take, 
for example, one of Scott's metrical romances or one 
of Shakespeare's plays. There will then always be need of 
collections of such material, selected and arranged with 
reference to the needs of the child and of the school. 
While we welcome the large use that teachers are com- 
ing to make of the masterpiece, we need have no fear 
or hope that it is going to put the readers out of the 
schoolhouse. 

The other point is that to compile good school readers 
requires peculiar taste aiul judgment, as well as practical 
knowledge of the necessities of the school. The English 
Conference before mentioned made these sound recommen- 
dations, which arc, however, of wider scope than the topic 
immediately before us : That reading books should be 
of a literary character ; that in teaching reading no at- 
tempt should be made to teach physics, science, or natural 
history ; and that sentimental poetry should be lightly 
drawn upon. School readers should touch all the main 
sources of the mental life, and should furnish a good in- 
troduction to English literature ; and that they may do 
this, they must be mainly drawn from the literature of 
power rather than the literature of knowledge.* Many 
subjects important in themselves are unsuitable for school 
readers, because they do not admit of literary treatment. 
No one would think of cutting a reading lesson out of a 
mathematical text-book or a scientific treatise. In fact, 

* " The function of the first [tho literature of knowled<:^e] is to 
teach; the function of tho second, to move; the first is a rudder, 
the second ;in oiir or i>ail." — {Vc Quincey : Alexander Pope.) 



TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. 105 

it is only when a writer on science turns aside from his 
subject proper and seizes its literary elements, as its de- 
scriptive or poetical phases in their peculiar relations to 
his own mind, that he can be said to produce literature 
at all. No discredit is hereby cast upon books of infor- 
mation or books of science ; they are invaluable both in 
school and in home, but it is a mistake to use them as 
school readers. The geographical readers, natural history 
readers, and the like can be successfully used only in a 
supplementary capacity, subordinate both to the special 
subject and to reading. Of all special subjects, history 
no doubt furnishes the best material for such a purpose, 
because it is so rich in human interest. Having first re- 
marked that in early childhood " the normal condition of 
life is a sensitive imagination, curious, wondering, reach- 
ing out to the unknown, building busily fabrics, often 
of strange form, out of the material cast in its way,'* 
and that in school parlance reading is the term applied 
to an exercise which is an end in itself, Mr. Scudder 
says : " Give to the child as soon as he is master of the 
rudiments of reading some form of great imaginative 
literature, and continue, year after year, to set large works 
before him, until he has completed his school course." 
This he calls " the educational law of reading," which he 
again states in this form : " I repeat that the educational 
law of reading lies in a steady presentation to the grow- 
ing mind of those works of art in literature which are the 
glory of the nation, of the race, and have an undying 
power to feed the imagination." * Professor Charles Eliot 
Norton also contends earnestly that reading books, all of 
them, should be made up of pure literature ; and, agree- 
ably with this view, he introduces into the first book of 

* The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1894, pp. 255, 256. . 



106 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

the series of readers that he has edited a large part of 
Mother Goose.* 

The school reader has been called the " walking-beam 
of the school." Besides being a practice book for teach- 
ing an art, and an anthology of English literature, it fur- 
nishes motive power for all the school studies, and partic- 
ularly for those that are taught from books. Moreover, 
it is scarcely an exaggeration to call it " the walking- 
beam " of the intellectual life. It is therefore to be re- 
gretted that there should be room for question as to the 
character of the great series of readers that are used in 
the schools. It is not difficult to find critics who hold 
that, in this respect, we have lost ground within the last 
twenty-five years. Lindley Murray's English Reader 
served its purpose, and passed out of use ; no wise man 
would attempt to bring it back to the home and the 
school ; but it must be said to the credit of the old 
Grammarian that his book contributed to form the minds 
of successive generations of readers, many of whom in 
correctness of literary taste and appreciation need not fear 
comparison with any of the better-schooled youth of our 
own times. 

This chapter relates to reading as thought. Moreover, 
this book deals with the thought side of reading rather 
than the mechanical-mental side. This is not because 
the mechanical-mental side is unimportant and does not 
need careful attention. School children are not going to 
pick up the technical elements of reading or acquire vocal 
facility unconsciously. Some, no doubt, will do so. The 
majority, however, must be tauglit to read by a teacher 
who understands that the mechanical parts of the art are 
second only to the spiritual parts. The old word " drill," 

* See the preface to the Heart of Oak Books, Second Book. 



TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. 107 

which is now so much out of fashion, has its place, for the 
organs of speech will not, without conscious effort, become 
accustomed to those co-ordinations among themselves that 
are needed in reading, or become co-ordinated to the 
mind, without appropriate exercises. Accordingly, from 
the beginning the vocal or elocutionary elements demand 
constant attention. Here everything depends on habit. 
Distinct articulation and due deliberation in utterance 
make reading intelligible ; the one guards against indis- 
tinctness, and the other against the confusion that arises 
from too great rapidity. Emphasis brings out the rela- 
tive importance of words. In reading, pronunciation 
must be watched as carefully as grammatical forms are in 
conversation and language lessons. At the same time, 
the teacher of reading must cultivate spontaneity in the 
pupil. Freedom is all- essential. The function of criti- 
cism will be made the subject of a chapter later on ; here, 
however, it is necessary to say that, when the class has 
prepared the lesson, either with or without the teacher's 
assistance, and they come to read, they should be left to 
read freely without interruption. In this way only can 
they put themselves into the work, which is so essential to 
good reading. And this is another argument for thorough 
preparation ; without it the pupil can not be master either 
of the subject or of himself. In the primary class the 
mechanical part of reading comes first, in the advanced 
class last. 

Two short exercises will illustrate what has been said 
in regard to questioning on reading lessons. 



108 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

I. 

SuN^SET OK THE Border. 
I. 

Day set on Norham's castled steep, 
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, 

And Cheviot's mountains lone : 
The battled towers, the donjon keep. 
The loophole grates where captives weep. 
The flanking walls that round it sweep, 

In yellow lustre shone. 

II. 

The warriors on the turrets high. 
Moving athwart the evening sky, 

Seemed forms of giant height : 
Their armour, as it caught the rays. 
Flashed back again the western blaze 

In lines of dazzling light. 

III. 

St. George's banner, broad and gay, 
Now faded, as the fading ray 

Less bright, and less, was flung; 
The evening gale had scarce the power 
To wave it on the donjon tower. 

So heavily it hung. 

JSTame the writer of these stanzas and the poem from 
which they are taken. Generally speaking, in what di- 
rection does the Tweed flow? Into what body of water 
does it empty? Why is it so celebrated in song, story, 
and history? Name the countries on either side. On 
which side is Norham ? Is there anything in the stanzas 
that enables us certainly to tell? What bearing, if any, 
has the banner on this question ? On which side of the 
river are the Cheviots? In prose construction, would 



TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. 109 

Norham and Tweed be in the possessive case? Explain 
the expressions " castled steep " and " the donjon keep." 
Explain also line five of the first stanza. Eor what noun 
does " it," line six, stand ? What are flanking walls and 
turrets ? Describe the armour that the soldiers wore. In 
what direction were the rays flashed back ? Why did the 
warriors on the turret seem giants? 

The stanzas having been well sifted by such questions 
as these, the teacher may continue : " Now we will go 
through the lines and build up the picture. First, put in 
the river, broad, fair, and deep, and the lone mountains ; 
then the castle crowning the steep, with its battled towers, 
its donjon keep, and flanking walls sweeping around the 
keep, and the captives weeping at the grated windows — 
the whole shining with the golden lustre of the closing 
day. Put the warriors on the high towers, moving back 
and forth before the evening sky, their burnished armour 
reflecting the blaze of the setting sun. Over the donjon 
fling out the banner, broad, gay, and faded, hanging 
heavily in the evening breeze." 

The great point in such exercises is not so much to 
call out or to impart definite information on particular 
points as it is to stimulate the imagination — to develop 
the whole scene from the words. In framing questions 
care should be taken to change somewhat the words of 
the text, or to throw them into a new order. Words and 
forms of expression tend to become crusted over, and it 
is necessary to break up the crust. 

The last thing to be done is to read the stanzas in a 
manner that will give the natural colour and life to the 
whole. And here it may be remarked that what Socrates 
says to Ion of the rhapsode is equally true of the reader. 
" And no man can be a rhapsode who does not understand 
the meaning of the poet. For the rhapsode ought to in- 



110 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

terpret the mind of the poet to his hearers, and how can 
he interpret him well unless he knows what he means?" 

II. 

Li]S"ES FKOM Lowell's Poem on" the Grates of Two 
ENGLISH Soldiers ok Cokcord Battle Groukd. 

1. These men were brave enough,* and true 

2. To the hired soldier's bulldog creed ; 

3. What brought them here they never knew, 

4. They fought as suits the English breed : 

5. They came three thousand miles, and died, 

6. To keep the Past upon its throne ; 

7. Unheard beyond the ocean tide, 

8. Their English mother made her moan. 

9. The turf that covers them no thrill 

10. Sends up to fire the heart and brain ; 

11. No stronger purpose nerves the will, 

12. No hope renews its youth again : 

13. From farm to farm the Concord glides, 

14. And trails my fancy with its flow ; 

15. O'erhead the balanced hen-hawk slides, 
IG. Twinned in the river's heaven below. 

17. But go, whose Bay State bosom stirs, 

18. Proud of thy birth and neighbour's right, 

19. Where sleep the heroic villagers 

20. Borne red and stiff from Concord fight ; 

21. Thought Reuben, snatching down his gun, 

22. Or Seth, as ebbed the life away, 

23. What earthquake rifts would shoot and run 

24. World-wide from that short April fray ? 

Such questions as the following will naturally occur to 
the intelligent teacher who reads carefully the foregoing 
lines : — 

2. What is the difference between a hired soldier and any other 
soldier ? Does the word " hired " always mean what it here means *? 
What do you understand by a bulldog creed? 

\ 



TEACHING READING AS THOUGHT. m 

3. What did bring the two soldiers to Cod cord? 

4. How does it suit the English breed to fight ? 

6. What is meant by "keeping the Past upon its throne'"? How 
did the death of the two men contribute to that end ? 

8. Explain this line. 

9-12. Explain these lines, and name the leading nouns and verbs. 

13-16. What connection have these lines with the four preced- 
ing and the four succeeding ones 1 Why has the poet introduced 
them ? Would you say the Mississippi " glides," or the Niagara ? 
Explain "the balanced hen-hawk slides," "twinned," and "river's 
heaven." 

17. What is the antecedent of " whose " ? What is the force of 
"but"? 

18. Why has the poet connected "birth" and "neighbour's 
right " ? 

19. 20. Where are these villagers to be found? 
21, 22. Name the subject of " thought." 

23, 24. Explain these lines. 

In Chapter YII something was said about the ethical value of 
lessons in the lower grades. Such value should never be lost sight 
of throughout the school course. History and literature are the 
school studies that are richest in such value, and they must be the 
great reliance of the teacher in promoting the ethical culture of his 
pupils. Still, the ethical effect of these studies should be felt indi- 
rectly rather than directly. Dr. Harris has wisely said : " There is 
an ethical and an aesthetical content to each work of art. It is 
profitable to point out both of these in the interest of the child's 
growing insight into human nature. The ethical should, however, 
be kept in subordination to the sesthetical, but for the sake of the 
supreme interests of the ethical itself. Otherwise the study of a 
work of art degenerates into a goody-goody performance, and its 
effects on the child are to cause a reaction against the moral. The 
child protects his inner individuality against effacement through 
external authority by taking an attitude of rebellion against stories 
with an appended moral. Herein the superiority of the aesthetical 
in literary art is to be seen." * 

* Report of the Committee of Fifteen on Correlation of Studies. 



^j^ lArJjo R^ 



CHAPTER XIV. 

TEACHIi^G COMPOSITION. 

FoR^iERLT the compositions in schools where they 
were required filled the pupils with more fear and trem- 
bling than any other exercise. " Composition day " was 
the black day of the week or month. For this there were 
several reasons. Most persons feel shy and timid when 
called upon to write compositions that they are to read in 
public, and especially the young and inexperienced. Then 
in the old elementary schools pupils rarely received any prep- 
aration for essay-writing. They knew nothing of language 
lessons, and written work of any kind was not required. 
They were rather left until they reached the upper grades 
of the elementary school, or perhaps the high school or 
academy, when they were suddenly called upon to produce 
the dreaded " composition." The call made, they were 
generally left to choose their own themes, to gather their 
own materials, to make their own outlines, and to write 
their own essays — all with little or no help. The only 
criticism was a few verbal corrections written on the paper, 
which half the time the pupils did not understand. Some 
of the more inventive or facile of them, by sheer dint 
of effort, struggled on and became good writers, but the 
majority found little benefit in writing their compositions. 
It was a regime that needed to be changed in every 
particular, and that has been so changed in all the 

112 



TEACHING COMPOSITION. 113 

best schools. Still, the subject is often badly handled 
at the present time, and it yet needs much caref al dis- 
cussion. 

In the broadest sense composition is the expression of 
thought by means of language. It involves invention and 
style ; or, first, the provision of ideas, and, second, their 
arrangement and utterance in sentences and paragraphs. 
Properly it includes the oral expression of thought as well 
as its written expression, but usage has confined the word 
practically to writing. 

Composition follows reading in the order of the school, 
as reading follows speech in the order of life. It rests on 
the same fundamental principle as the other language- 
arts. As the child learns to talk by talking and to read 
by reading, so he learns to write by writing. According- 
ly, power of utterance is the first desideratum. Fluency 
must be sought for before correctness ; or, in other words, 
the teacher must have freedom and spontaneity in view. 
While it is true that to write good sentences is more me- 
chanical than to speak or read them, at the same time 
we must rely upon use and wont rather than precepts. 
Formal grammar and rhetoric should play no part in the 
early stages of composition teaching. 

Obviously composition stands to language lessons in 
the same relation that the study of literature stands to 
reading lessons. It is a more advanced stage of progress. 
What has been said therefore of teaching those lessons, in 
previous chapters, is, for the most part, equally true and 
valuable in the present chapter. In fact, the two exer- 
cises are so much alike that it is impossible to write in- 
telligently about one without touching on the other. All 
the exercises that are grouped around the reading lesson 
should contribute to the composition lesson. Telling 
stories, conversation, reading, whether silent or aloud, 



114 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

recitations, oral narratives — all tend to swell at once the 
volume of the pupil's thought and of his vocabulary. 
Much the same may be said of all the exercises of the 
school. Whatever adds to the pupil's store of facts and 
ideas, enhances his power to think, and augments his lin- 
guistic resources, will minister to the art of exj)ressing 
hiuiself in written words. Still, the help that comes from 
these sources is not sufficient. No matter how full the 
mind may be, and how fluent the expression, the com- 
position will not write itself. At first the child has one 
single lesson that sums up his school work, viz., his read- 
ing ; but as he ascends the grades, the language-arts begin 
to diverge more and more, and finally become distinct 
studies, so called. Like the others, composition is a dis- 
tinct and separate art, and it can be acquired only through 
tlie use of its own distinctive methods. 

To adjust one's thought and utterance to the styhis — 
to co-ordinate mind and pen — can be accomplished only 
through practice. In Eadestock's words, " Habit must 
build the bridge, uniting theory with practice, by changing 
dead knowledge into living power." There are good think- 
ers who are neither good speakers nor good writers, but 
which is the larger class — the good speakers who are poor 
writers or the good writers who are good speakers — it 
were hard to say. Ascham says, " Ready speakers gener- 
ally be not the best, plainest, and wisest writers, nor yet 
the deepest judges in weighty matters, because they do 
not tarry to weigh and judge of things as they ought, but 
having their heads overfull of matter be like pens over- 
full of ink, which will sooner blot than make any fair 
letter at all." One thing is clear, that the majority of 
people find the art of composition a difficult one. It was 
said of a great oculist that he spoiled a whole hatful of 
e3^es learning to operate for cataract, and it is probable 



TEACHING COMPOSITION. 115 

that most good writers have spoiled as many reams of 
paper in learning to write. 

How far excellence in writing depends upon ISTature, 
and how far upon practice, is an old question, and one 
about which men are never likely to agree. Professor 
Minto has stated the case very temperately, as follows : 

" The successful practice of all arts must depend large- 
ly upon natural gifts. In writing, as in other arts, rules 
do not carry the practitioner far; rules must always be 
for the most part negative, and a man may have the com- 
pletest knowledge how not to write and yet dip his pen 
and cudgel his brains in vain, ^one the less it is absurd 
to suppose that in writing, which is one of the most diffi- 
cult of the arts, a man has nothing to learn, nothing to 
gain by study — that he has only to know his subject and 
the words will come of themselves in the best possible 
choice and order." * 

While we may cheerfully concede that the great writer, 
like the poet, is born and not made, we need not hesitate 
to say that the ordinary writer is made and not born. It 
is a matter of practice rather than of talent or genius. 
The school can do little for the great writer, and he may 
safely be left to shift for himself, but it can do much for 
the ordinary one. Still more, the practice must run along 
the line of examples rather than of precepts. Eoger 
Ascham said very aptly: "And surely one example is more 
valuable, both to good and ill, than twenty precepts writ- 
ten in books. And so Plato, not in one or two, but in 
divers places doth plainly teach." Quintilian declares that 
without the assistance of Nature precepts and treatises are 
of no avail. His treatise, he says, was not written for him 
to whom talents are wanting any more than treatises on 

* Plain Principles of Prose Composition, p. 8. 



116 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

agriculture are written for barren ground. And still he 
closes his introduction, from which this illustration is 
taken, with the impressive warning : " These very quali- 
ties, likewise, are of no profit in themselves without a 
skilful teacher, persevering study, and great and continued 
exercise in writing, reading, and speaking." 

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the 
main efficacy of examples or models is conscious imitation. 
As a man unconsciously takes on the manners and habits of 
the society in the midst of which he lives, moves, and has 
his being, so he takes on the manner and the style both of 
the thought and language of the books in which he 
becomes deeply interested. The fact is, that intelligent 
minds grow up in a literary environment that impresses 
them strongly. As Professor Minto says again : 

" The obvious truth is, that the man who writes well 
must do so by example, if not by precept. In any lan- 
guage that has been used for centuries as a literary instru- 
ment, the beginner can not begin as if he were the first in 
the field. Whatever he purposes to write, be it essay, or 
sermon, or leading article, history, or fiction, there are 
hundreds of things of the same kind in existence, some of 
which he must have read and can not help taking more or 
less as patterns. The various forms or plans of composi- 
tion of every kind have been gradually developed by the 
practice of successive generations. If a man writes effect- 
ively without giving a thought to the manner of his com- 
position, it must be because he has chanced upon good 
models, and not merely because he knows his subject well, 
or feels it deeply, and has a natural gift of expression. He 
can spare himself the trouble of thinking because his 
predecessors have thought for him ; he is rich as being 
the possessor of inherited wealth." * 

* I'huii I'liiiciplus of Prose Composition, \)[). 8, 9. 



TEACHING COMPOSITION. 117 

Still, we can not trust to environment alone. There 
must be study and practice and earnest striving to im- 
prove. The following directions and hints, as a whole, are 
given for the guidance of the teacher rather than of the 
pupil : — 

I. Good training in the other language-arts, and par- 
ticularly in language lessons, should prepare the way for 
formal composition. It will rob the essay of half its ter- 
rors. Unfortunately, the teacher on going into the school 
will sometimes find that such preparation has not been 
made. Furthermore, it will be impracticable to put the 
older and more advanced pupils at pure language work. 
What shall be done in such cases? 'No better course can 
be taken than to effect a compromise between what should 
be and what can be, adapting the work to the pupil the 
best that circumstances will permit. 

II. In composition it is peculiarly important to enlist 
the interest and pleasure of the pupil. Mere drill is use- 
ful in some studies, as in mathematics, but it will accom- 
plish little in composition. Essays that do not interest 
the pupil are not likely to interest others. 

III. The choice of a subject is of importance.' The 
subject determines the pupil's source of matter, and matter 
and style can not be separated. If he has an abundance 
of ideas, he is likely to express himself with clearness 
and force. If he has no ideas, or few, the plight of 
the children of Israel in making bricks without straw 
is pleasant in comparison. The subject should inspire 
confidence in the pupil, not be a load for him to carry. 
There is little benefit in the pupil's laboriously piecing 
together facts and ideas and stamping the product an 
" essay." 

IV. As a rule, the teacher should choose and assign 
the subjects. If this is not done, the pupil is likely to lose 

10 



118 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

much valuable time in making a choice, and to make a bad 
one at last. It is important to help the puj^il over the 
discouraging beginning. Many persons find it difiicult to 
make a start who write well when once the start is made. 
Under this head still more definite hints and suggestions 
must be given : 

1. The teacher should not throw subjects around the 
class at random, but, as far as possible, consult the indi- 
vidual taste and capacity of pupils. The right theme 
should find the right boy or girl. Composition should 
follow and not precede the pupil's interest. The teacher 
should choose the line of least resistance. 

2. Avoid abstract and general themes and choose those 
that are concrete and particular. On this point Mr. Huff- 
cut has some excellent remarks. 

"Every schoolboy has written his essay on the vir- 
tues, and every schoolgirl has filled her allotted number 
of pages with vague generalities regarding Sunshine and 
Shadow. Consign all such subjects to the limbo of Dr. 
Quackenbos's Ehetoric. If you doubt that that is the 
proper place for them, read his list of five hundred and 
sixty-six subjects for essays, among which one finds such 
as Spring, Peace, War, Death, Life, Anger, Astronomy, 
Jealousy, Conscience, and Law ; Earth's Benefactors, The 
Stoic Philosophy, The Comparative Influence of Individ- 
uals and Learned Societies in Forming Literary Character 
in a Nation ; and, finally, as if neither this world nor the 
limits of time could confine the knowledge and imagina- 
tion of a schoolboy, the learned doctor seriously announces 
as a suitable subject for classroom use The Immortality of 
the Soul. We can not avoid a little disappointment at 
not finding something about the Kantian Philosophy, 
Esoteric Buddhism, or Transcendental Physics ; but per- 
haps these omissions are compensated for by the inclu- 



TEACHING COMPOSITION. Hg 

sion of the subjects, Mesmerism, Psycliology, and Spir- 
itualism." * 

3. In the elementary school "book subjects" should 
be used sparingly ; subjects from Nature and life will be 
found more real and interesting. But, care must be taken 
not to vulgarize the mind by the selection of vulgar sub- 
jects. The cyclopasdia subject is vicious, since it stimu- 
lates compilation rather than observation and thinking, 
and so lacks reality. Still, literature is a proper and in- 
dispensable source of subjects and materials. The pupil 
who is old enough to read Ivanhoe or The Lady of the 
Lake may write out the action of the novel or poem, or a 
part of it. Shakespeare may be used to excellent advan- 
tage in the school. For younger pupils shorter tales or 
stories will answer the purpose. Nor do I mean positively 
to prohibit the cyclopaedia ; it may be used to much ad- 
vantage in a tentative form of research work ; the great 
point is to make the essay real and vital. 

4. There are four types of prose composition : narra- 
tive, description, exposition, and argumentation. As pure 
types they should be taught in the order in which they are 
here enumerated. The bearing of this point on the selec- 
tion of themes is obvious. Narrative, or the story form, 
is the proper one for young children. Description should 
not be attempted until the powers of observation are 
somewhat developed. 

5. Progressively, the level of the subjects, as well as 
the treatment demanded, should be raised. In particular, 
pupils should not, to the end of their school life, be trust- 
ed only with particular themes, but should gradually have 
their faces turned toward abstract thought. 

V. The teacher should instruct the pupil in the modus 

* English in the Preparatory Schools, pp. 15, 16. 



120 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

or machinery of composition. Pupils, and older persons 
for that matter, who have ideas and language, often fail 
in composition because they do not know where to hegin, 
how to proceed, or wlien to end. In a word, they do not 
know how to organize their matter. This is a subject 
which calls for much careful thought on the teacher's 
part, and to assist the teacher these more definite obser- 
vations are submitted : 

1. There are three units of composition : the sentence, 
the paragraph, and the essay. Every one of these units in 
itself is an organic whole. Back of it is a distinct idea. 

A sentence is the proper expression in words of one 
main thought, with or without one or more modifying 
thoughts. It is not any string of words that may be 
j)arsed, or that even makes sense, but an organization of 
words conveying a clear and separate thought. It must 
contain one subject and one predicate at least, and it 
may contain more or less subsidiary matter. 

A paragraph is an ordered series of such sentences 
that together present one phase or aspect of a subject. 
It is a fully developed thought. It is not, therefore, a 
mere series of sentences, a piece or section of a composi- 
tion cut off at random, but a complete organic whole. 

An essay proper is a series of paragraphs that deal 
with the whole of the subject, or with several phases of 
it, duly arranged in order. It is not a piece of writing 
filling so many pages, or occupying so much time, but it 
is a thought-out composition having a beginning, a mid- 
dle, and an end. 

2. By the time that he has reached the seventh grade, 
at least, the pupil should understand the function of every 
one of these units. Whether he can define them or not is 
not material. The teacher can readily show their nse and 
relations by analyzing with the class a number of suitable 



TEACniNO COMPOSITION. 121 

compositions. Of the three the paragraph will give the 
most trouble. This is partly owing to the caprice with 
which good writers sometimes paragraph their work, part- 
ly to the slight attention that books devoted to composi- 
tion and rhetoric give to the subject, and partly to its in- 
trinsic difficulty. The paragraph stands midway between 
the sentence and the essay. It is at once both a whole 
and a part. It rests, however, on a single psychological 
conception. " In all our voluntary thinking," says Pro- 
fessor James, " there is some topic or subject about which 
all the members of the thought revolve," and this topic 
is the core of the paragraph. The principal trouble in 
handling it arises from the tendency of the revolving 
members to fly off and attach themselves to some neigh- 
bouring centre of thought. The pupil will commit many 
blunders, and can attain to skill only through much 
practice ; and these facts are reasons why his attention 
should be directed to the subject almost from the time 
that he begins to write. Written or printed matter that 
is divided into sections of appropriate length looks better 
on the page than matter that is not so divided ; still, the 
great reason for paragraphing is psychological. It is 
needed to show the logical relations of the different parts 
of the subject-matter. 

3. The sentence is the ultimate unit of all speech that 
expresses thought. Without good sentences good com- 
position is impossible. At the same time good sentences 
do not insure good paragraphs or a good essay. The rela- 
tions of the sentences are hardly less important than the 
sentences themselves. Still, the sentence is the beginning 
point. In order to write good sentences the writer must 
see clearly the subject, the predicate, and the subsidiary 
matter. Whether he knows the words that name or de- 
scribe these elements or not, is of little practical conse- 



122 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

quence. And further, the first sentence has a certain rela- 
tion to the second one, the second to the third, and so on. 
This is the reason why it would be very inconsiderate for 
a writer to compose his sentences as he might discharge 
shots from a pistol, mechanically. He should rather seize 
the whole view of the subject that forms the topic of the 
paragraph, and then proceed to write his sentences. It 
would be too mechanical for him to count out in advance 
these sentences, but he should mentally encompass the 
ground that he proposes to inclose in words. In this way 
the paragraph reacts most decidedly upon the sentences. 
In a previous chapter it was incidentally remarked that 
the child's first essays should be single paragraphs. In 
this way the idea of the paragraph will be developed, and 
also skill in executing it. In such cases, however, it is 
not at all necessary that the several views or phases of the 
subject should be sharply discriminated. The paragraph 
essay will in due time give way to the essay proper. 

Dr. Whately has remarked that copiousness of matter 
follows from the limitation of the view, and that fact is 
an additional reason for studying the paragraph. " The 
more general and extensive view," he says, " will often 
suggest nothing to the mind but vague and trite remarks, 
when, upon narrowing the field of discussion, many inter- 
esting questions of detail present themselves." * While a 
boy of fourteen can not do much with the universe, he may 
fairly be expected to treat adequately some very small part 
of it. A pupil of mine once wrote an excellent essay on 
" Washington as a Farmer," who would probably have 
written an indifferent or poor one on "-Washington." 

VI. What has been said under the last division in- 
volves the making of outlines. To analyze a subject is to 

* Elements of Rhetoric, i, 1, 2. 



TEACHING COMPOSITION. 123' 

discover the phases that present proper subjects for para- 
graphs. Accordingly, when the pupil passes from the 
paragraph essay to the essay proper, the teacher must give 
the needed attention to this matter. Some subjects he 
should analyze for the benefit of the class, outlining them 
on the blackboard. He should freely discuss plans and 
outlines with the pupil privately. Outlines may also be 
required of the pupil that he is not expected to fill out. 
If a pupil merely holds a subject dangling before his vision, 
or causes it rapidly to revolve like a thaumotrope, he will 
not get any clear view of it either in part or in whole ; 
when, if he would carefully look at its several phases, he 
would immediately discover things that would interest 
him. Once the subject has been chosen and the plan 
agreed upon, the remainder of the road is commonly easy. 
Of course when book subjects are assigned the teacher 
must be ready to furnish titles and directions for reading. 

VII. Eules and criticism. While the function of criti- 
cism in the language-arts will be made the subject of a 
separate chapter, two or three observations are called for 
here. 

One is, that a teacher of composition must not be too 
nice. What the pupil needs is writing, and plenty of it, 
and the teacher must not unduly repress spontaneity. 
The first thing is to get the stream of thought to flowing. 
Still, grammatical errors and vulgarisms must be rigor- 
ously corrected from the first. Absurdity of matter and 
infelicity in expression must be left, in great part, for the 
pruning knife of time. Another thing is that rules 
should not be taught as formal lessons, but should be in- 
troduced, when introduced at all, in connection with criti- 
cism. As Professor Minto says in the passage already 
quoted, " Eules must always be, for the most part, negative." 
Again, only mechanical rules should be given ; rules that 



124 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE- ARTS. 

embody psychological laws should be left to a later day. 
The leading rules for capitalization and punctuation 
should be taught in the lower grades. Let not the 
teacher, however, be too minute in his exactions, particu- 
larly under the second head. Punctuation is an art, and 
a very delicate one at that. Finally, the teacher should 
arrange exercises and lessons with reference to pupils' 
mistakes, as in capitalization and the use of verbal forms 
and syntactical constructions. 

One very important point should, perhaps, have re- 
ceived earlier mention, viz., the relation of thought-mate- 
rial to thought-expression. It has indeed been alluded to 
in the remarks concerning the assignment of subjects, and 
again in the quotation from Whately regarding copious- 
ness of matter. The topic brings before us again, at a 
more advanced stage of the education of the child, the 
relation of intellect and language. From the very nature 
of this relation, it follows that the first requisite to com- 
position is to have something to say. Composition is 
a real and not a formal exercise ; and the admonition to 
" first catch the hare " is not more essential to cooking a 
hare than the admonition to attend first to invention is 
to the formation of good style. The great writers of the 
world have been men gifted in both gathering and retain- 
ing the materials of composition. They have been men 
of observation, of insight, of reading, of reflection, of 
capacious and retentive memory, of two or more of these 
qualities, as well as of creative faculties. The powers of 
creation can be developed only on a basis of such mate- 
rials. We are amazed at the fertility and productivity of 
mind shown by Sir Walter Scott when at the maturity 
of his powers. There is equal reason why we should be 
amazed by the omnivorous reading, the wide and keen ob- 
servation of Nature and man, and the thorough research 



TEACHING COMPOSITION. 125 

that in earlier years accumulated the materials which his 
imaginatiou afterward worked up into ballad, poem, and 
romance. 

It will be seen that the plan of teaching language and 
composition outlined in these pages does not contemplate 
the use by the pupil of the current books on those sub- 
jects, or indeed of any books at all. Such helps would be 
useful to the well-equipped teacher; to the ill-equipped 
one they would be invaluable ; but it is not advisable to 
put them into the hands of the learner. The work to be 
done is not the learning or recitation of lessons, but rather 
the practice of an art under intelligent guidance. The 
formal instruction that the pupil really needs should be 
furnished by the teacher. To set the pupil at work at a 
book makes the work artificial, mechanical, and unreal. 
It is just as absurd as it would be to give him a book of 
object-lessons. 

Much is now said about conducting teaching on the 
intensive or concentrative plan. The idea is so to select 
and combine studies that one will help another. The de- 
sirability of pursuing this course in the language-arts has 
several times been urged in preceding chapters, and noth- 
ing more needs to be said on the general subject. But the 
question sometimes assumes this form : Shall a special 
teacher of English be employed in the school ? In oppo- 
sition to an exclusive reliance upon such a teacher, it 
has been urged that, in the period of life when imitation 
is so powerful, the child should be kept as far as possible 
from bad models, and as near as possible to good models ; 
also "that every thought which he expresses, whether 
orally or on paper, should be regarded as a proper subject 
for criticism as to language. Thus, every lesson in geog- 
raphy or physics or mathematics may and should become 
a part of the child's training in English." " There can 



126 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

be no more appropriate moment for a brief lesson in ex- 
pression," it is said, " than the moment when the pupil 
has something which he is trying to express. If this 
principle is not regarded, a recitation in history or in 
botany, for example, may easily undo all that a set exer- 
cise in English has accomplished. In order that both 
teacher and pupil may attach due importance to this inci- 
dental instruction in English, the pupil's standing in 
any subject should depend in part on his use of clear and 
correct English." * 

While the general tenor of this teaching is sound, it is 
in one particular carried too far. If the pupil is allowed 
in his general lessons to fall into slovenly habits of expres- 
sion, the good work of formal lessons in English will be 
undone ; what is woven by day is ravelled out at night. 
But it is a great mistake to say that there can be no more 
appropriate moment for a lesson in expression than the 
moment when the pupil has something which he is trying 
to say. So far from that, this is the very moment when 
he should be left free and untrammelled to express what 
is in his mind, and this by the teacher of English as well 
as by the teacher of grammar or physics. It is the mo- 
ment for expression and not for a lesson in expression. 
To be sure, when the expression has been given as freely 
and fully as possible, it is the proper subject of correction. 
That must be a question of judgment. There can be no 
doubt, however, that the schools are now suffering, and 
suffering severely, from failures of teachers in the same 
school, as high schools, to co-operate in the work of teach- 
ing English. 

Dr. Franklin gives an interesting account of the way 
in which he formed his style of composition, which is 

* Report of Conference on English to the Committee of Ten, p. 
87. Washington, 1892. 



TEACHING COMPOSITION. 127 

certainly clear, direct, and forcible.* This account hap- 
pily illustrates what may be called the study of literary 
mechanism or architecture. While such study is ex- 
tremely useful in its way, it must not be misunderstood 
or overvalued. Neither this bit of history nor Dr. John- 
son's recommendation of Addison quoted in another place 
must be taken too literally. Conscious imitation of style 
is a fatal method in literature. What the student wants 
is the genius or spirit of his model ; and the best way, in 
fact the only way, to secure that is to bring himself under 
the power of the model. The model must work in him 
as a force, not be imposed iipon him as a rule from with- 
out. The method should be unconscious imitation, not 
conscious ; dynamics, not statics. The first new sap that 
circulates through the branches of a tree in springtime 
quickly pushes off the dead leaves that have defied all the 
storms of winter. 

Composition is a noble art, the value of which is not 
confined within narrow limits. It is rather of universal 
value. In school it directly helps the work in all the 
studies — in chemistry, physics, and mathematics, as well 
as in history and literature. In real life the art stands 
the professional man in good stead, as well as the man of 
letters. Ability to express one's thoughts clearly, forcibly, 
and with a degree of elegance — that is, ability to write 
good English — is perhaps the highest test of mental culti- 
vation. It is the slow-maturing fruit of real culture. 
Practice in the art should begin low down in the grades, 
and should continue, if possible, to the end of the college 
course. If this be impossible, as sometimes unfortunately 
it is, reasonable pains should be taken to create an interest 
in the work and an enthusiasm for it, while it is a subject 
for instruction, that will last the pupil through life. 

* See his Autobiography, Bigelow's edition, pp. 95, 96. 



/ 



CHAPTER XV. 

TEACHIl^G ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



Iisr preceding chapters many remarks have been made 
that bear on teaching English literature. It is necessary, 
however, to supplement these remarks, which have been 
incidental in character, with a formal chapter on the 
subject. 

The first thing for the teacher of literature to settle 
in his mind, and the most important, is the object or aim 
to be held in view. Why should literature be taught in 
the schools of the country ? What is it to teach literature ? 
What is taught when literature, as such, is taught ? What 
is literature ? Clear answers to these questions are the 
more necessary, for the reason that quite different things 
are taught as literature in the schools. Manifestly, too, 
we can not answer them without grasping the elements 
that enter into the conception of literature. These ele- 
ments, as I view it, are correctly stated by Mr. Quick in 
his Educational Reformers. 

" When the conceptions of an individual mind are ex- 
pressed in a permanent form of words, we get literature. 
The sum total of all the permanent forms of expression in 
one language make up the literature of that language ; 
and if no one has given his conceptions a form which has 
been preserved, the language is without a literature. 
There are, then, two things essential to a literary work : 
first, the conceptions of an individual mind; second, a 

128 



TEACniXG ENGLISH LITERATURE. 129 

permanent form of expression. Hence it folloTrs that the 
domain of literature is distinct from the domain of natural 
or mathematical science. Science does not give us the 
conceptions of an individual mind, but it tells us what 
every rational person who studies the subject must think. 
And science is entirely independent of any form of words : 
a proposition of Euclid is science ; a sonnet of Words- 
worth's is literature. We learn from Euclid certain 
truths which we should have learnt from some one else 
if Euclid had never existed, and the propositions may be 
conveyed equally well in different forms of words and in 
any language. But a sonnet of Wordsworth's conveys 
thought and feeling peculiar to the poet ; and even if the 
same thought and feeling were conveyed to us in other 
words, we should lose at least half of what he has given 
us. Poetry is indeed only one kind of literature, but it is 
the highest kind ; and what is true of literary works in 
verse is true also in a measure of literary works in prose. 
. . . There are two ways in which a work of literature 
may excite our admiration and affect our minds. These 
are, first, by the beauty of the conceptions it conveys to 
us ; and, second, by the beauty of the language in which 
it conveys them. In the greatest works the two excel- 
lences will be combined." * 

Literary taste relates especially to the second of these 
elements, beauty of expression. Eeverting to Professor 
Laurie's analysis of language, we see that literature em- 
braces the first and last of the three elements. It is a 
real study and an esthetic study. Eundamentally the 
object of teaching literature is the same as the object of 
teaching reading as thought ; the main difference between 

* Pp. 5, 6. See also J. H. Newman, University Subjects, Lit- 
erature. 



130 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

the reading of the primary grades and the literature of 
the high school or the college being one of degree and 
not of kind. And this brings us back to the old idea, 
that the art of reading is only a tool with which to ac- 
quire the wealth of knowledge, thought, and beauty with 
which books are stored. To convey meaning is the great 
function of language ; but literature has also a message 
of grace and beauty for the soul, which is partly in the 
thought itself and partly in the expression of the thought. 
Gray's Elegy, for instance, pleases not so much by its 
ideas as by the setting and expression of the ideas. The 
stanza beginning - 

" Can storied urn or animated bust," 
translated into ordinary prose, is commonplace enough. 
Great literature, prose or poetry, and especially of the 
creative order, is rich in this ideal and sesthetic element. 
It is not something separate and apart from the real ele- 
ment, but is bound up with it, and can not be separated 
from it. Good style goes with subject-matter. " St^de 
is not to be compared," it has been said, " to the vesture 
which covers a man's body, but rather to the native and 
natural covering of the beasts of the field. The play and 
elasticity of the close-fitting lion's hide is very different 
from any vestment with wdiich the fashionable tailor cov- 
ers the lion's master." 

We may say, then, that in teaching literature the real 
element and the ideal element — the substance and the art — 
must be held together. Still, the major stress should be 
placed on thought or substance. What follows when men 
sink meaning in words has been amply illustrated in two 
great periods of intellectual history — first, in the decline 
of Grecian literature, and secondly in the decline of the 
Renaissance. A mistake at this point committed in the 
schools would be fatal to all sound education. Were 



TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE. 131 

literature to remain in the schools a day after the teachers 
should get into their heads the idea that their great func- 
tion is to teach " beauty," it would be an unmitigated 
curse. 

But while literature as such presents to our minds but 
two primary aspects, it presents many subordinate ones. 
It may be studied with a lexical purpose, dictionary in 
hand ; or it may be treated philologically, inquiring into 
the history and origin of words. It may be made to 
teach or illustrate the history of opinion and feeling, man- 
ners and customs, morals, politics, and religion, social life, 
and many other interesting matters. The stress may be 
laid on phonology, on the structure of sentences, on style, 
on the mannerisms of authors. The growth of literature, 
the life, character, and environment of authors, the rela- 
tion of literature to social life as cause or effect, are all 
important aspects of the subject. Or the student may 
spend his time hunting for curiosities, just as men have 
sought out strange signboards in cities and quaint epi- 
taphs in churchyards. It must be admitted, too, that 
these subordinate features have value, but not equal value. 
All, or most of them, maybe recognised in teaching litera- 
ture, but not to the same degree. The truth is that they 
have variable values, according to the interest and purpose 
of the student. But, plainly, these variable factors must 
not be permitted to usurp the place that belongs of right 
to the universal factors. It is perfectly proper to use 
literature as a basis for teaching grammar, philology, his- 
tory, and the like, only the teacher who thus employs it 
should not suppose that he is teaching literature. Mr. 
John Morley says, " Literature, viewed as an instrument of 
systematic education . . . would mean a connected survey 
of idea, sentiment, imagination, taste, invention, and all 
the other material of literature, as affecting, and affected 



132 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

by, the great experiences of the human mind, and social 
changes brought by time."* . Literature, therefore, has a 
grand teaching function, instructing men in politics, in 
morals and manners, in taste, and in religion, expanding 
their minds, filling them with high ideals, and in all ways 
refining their character and ennobling their life, s^ 

It can not be said, on the whole, that literature is so 
taught in the schools as to fill this measure. Often at- 
tention is fixed on subordinate ends to such an extent 
that the work ceases to be the study of literature ; turn- 
ing on grammar, rhetoric, philology, criticism, or on two 
or more of these combined. Nor is it hard to discover 
the causes of the failure. Those to whom the majority 
of teachers look for guidance have sometimes failed to 
state clearly and strongly the true ends of the study. The 
classical tradition and the difficulty of the subject to- 
gether have suggested false ideals and false mehods. Clas- 
sical teachers tend to lay the stress on the grammatical 
and philological elements of the classics to the exclusion 
of the literary elements ; which, again, is due partly to 
the fact that the pupils are learning foreign languages, 
and partly to the exaggeration of scientific method, due 
in large measure to German influence. Often notes and 
comments are accumulated until the classic is buried out 
of sight. Often the teacher expends his strength on 
points that are important only to the specialist. Now, 
most unfortunately, the classical teacher has stood as the 
model of the literature teacher. First it has been as- 
sumed that English literature should be made to answer 
the same educational ends as the classical or modern lan- 
guages, and then methods have been chosen with reference 
to that ideal. The assumption is false and the methods 

* J. C. Collins : The Study of English Literature, pp. 109, 110. 



TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE. I33 

are yicioiis. For evidence, I may point to the schools and 
to many of the editions of English classics that have been 
prepared for use in the schools. My attention has been 
called in particular to the " Cambridge Milton " edited by 
Mr. A. AY. Verity for the University Press. Paradise 
Lost, books iii and iv, now lies before me. The Yolume, 
which is really a beautiful one, is made up as follows : In- 
troduction (embracing Life of Milton, History of Para- 
dise Lost, The Story of the Poem, Milton's Blank Verse), 
71 pages ; text, 60 pages ; notes, 78 pages ; index of words 
and phrases, 4 pages ; total, 213 pages. The disproportion 
of the illustrative matter to the text is really much greater 
than the figures show, because the type in which it is put 
is much smaller. Many of the notes deal with matter that 
is unimportant or merely curious, thus drawing the atten- 
tion of teacher and pupil away from the " Milton " to the 
sayings about Milton. Every student of the poem will 
remember the lines (33-36, book iii) in which the poet 
speaks of the blind poets and prophets : 

..." Nor sometimes forget 
Those other two equalled with me in fate, 
So were I equalled with them in renown, 
Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, 
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old." 

To these lines the editor devotes nineteen lines of closely 
printed commentary.* It is indeed very desirable that 



* " Tham^Tis ; according to Homer, Iliad ii, pp. 595-600, a 
Thracian bard, who, for boasting that he could surpass the Muses in 
song, was deprived of his sight and of the power of singing. Plato 
mentions him together with Orpheus twice (Laws viii, p. 829 E, 
Rep. X, p. 620 A). 

'•' Mteonides, i. e,, Homer ; called Maeonides, either as a son of 
Maeon, or as a native of Maeonia, the ancient name of Lydia. Hence 
he is also called Masonius senex, and his poems the Maeoniae chartae 
11 



134 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

there should be a " Milton " that contains all this learn- 
ing, and Professor Masson has well met that want in 
his well-known edition of the Poetical Works. But in a 
" Milton for schools," such as the " Cambridge Milton " 
purports to be, it is wholly out of place. Every gooi 
teacher knows that the pupil will not learn the facts that 
Mr. Verity gives unless he is crammed, that he will very 
soon forget them even then, and that they would be of 
little value to him if he remembered them at all. " There 
are millions of truths," says John Locke, " that men are 
not concerned to know " ; and few mental qualities in the 
teacher are more valuable than the sense of perspective. 
We do not know the name of Horace's bore, and it is just 
as well that we do not. 

Directly opposed to the Verity model of teaching lit- 
erature is the one described by Mr. Hudson in his essay 
entitled How to use Shakespeare in School.* Save as 
might be necessary to accommodate the spirit of the pas- 
sage to prose writing, I do not see that it is necessary or 
advisable to change a single word in the following passage 
before we adopt it as a general method for school use : 

or Maeonium carmen. The tradition of his blindness is mentioned 
as early as the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo. 

"Tiresias, the blind soothsayer of Thebes, famous through the 
CEdipus Rex of Sophocles and many other works down to Tenny- 
son's Tiresias. In De Idea Platonica, pp. 25, 2G, M., refers to hira as 
* the Theban seer whose blindness proved his best illumination.' 

" Phineus, another blind prophet, king of Salmydessus in Thrace ; 
best known in connection with the Harpies (^neid iii, pp. 211-213), 
from whose torments two of the Argonauts freed him. In his sec- 
ond Letter to Leonard Philaras (September 28, 1854), M. compares 
himself with Phineus. quoting the account of the prophet's blind- 
ness in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius." 

* See his As You Like It, prepared for use in Schools and 
Families. 



TEACHIXG ENGLISH LITERATURE. 135 

" As to the language part of the exercise, this is chiefly 
concerned with the meaning and force of the Poet's words, 
but also enters more or less into sundry points of gram- 
mar, word-growth, prosody, and rhetoric, making the 
whole as little technical as possible. And I use, or aim to 
use, all this for the one sole purpose of getting the pupils 
to understand what is immediately before them, not look- 
ing at all to any lingual or philological purposes lying 
beyond the matter directly in hand. And here I take 
the utmost care not to push the part of verbal comment 
and explanation so long or so far as to become dull and 
tedious to the jDupils. For as I wish them to study Shake- 
speare, simply that they may learn to understand and to 
love his poetry itself, so I must and will have them take 
pleasure in the process ; and people are not apt to fall or 
to grow in love with things that bore them. I would 
much rather they should not fully understand his thought, 
or not take in the full sense of his lines, than that they 
should feel anything of weariness or disgust in the study ; 
for the defect of present comprehension can easily be re- 
paired in the future, but not so the disgust. If they really 
love the poetry, and find it pleasant to their souls, I'll risk 
the rest." * 

It must be remembered that, for the time, we are deal- 
ing with schools, and not with colleges and universities. 
And for schools Mr. Hudson puts the mark high enough. 
In the higher institutions of learning, much more can be 
undertaken and accomplished. It is to this more ad- 
vanced stage of instruction that I should refer nearly all 
of the admirable suggestions of method found in Mr. J. 
C. Collins's Study of English Literature, although the 
secondary school teacher may read the book with great 
advantage, f 

* P, xii. f See particularly pp. 51-53. 



136 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

Within the limits defined there is room for a variety of 
exercises, or rather of questions. How far the study of 
words, grammatical analysis, historical illustration, and 
the like shall be carried is partly a question of time and 
place. IIow proficient are the pupils ? How much time 
is assigned to the subject ? Very often subordinate ends 
are essential to the accomplishment of the main purpose. 
Lexical questions, grammatical questions, rhetorical ques- 
tions, historical facts, and facts of Nature must be sup- 
plied in order that the content of the 23assage or lesson may 
be reached. Sometimes the general grammatical frame- 
work of a paragraph or composition may be considered. 
If the aim is to dwell upon a piece until it is thor- 
oughly understood, then questions and explanations must 
be multiplied until that end is reached. But the main 
rule is this: In teaching literature, questions and illus- 
trations must be subordinate to the development of the 
literary elements of the composition. Many things can 
be taught about literature without actually teaching it. 
Professor Corson contends that "a sufficiently qualified 
teacher could arrive at a nicer and more certain estimate 
of what a student has appreciated, both intellectually and 
aesthetically, of a literary product, or any portion of a 
literary product, by requiring him to read it, than he 
could arrive at through any amount of catechising.* 

Sometimes it is asked whether it is better to study a 
few compositions very thoroughly or many compositions 
loss thoroughly. In my view the proper plan is to com- 
bine the two ideas, taking pains, however, to give the 
major part of the time to the more general and discursive 
work. The one exercise will give depth, the other breadth. 
The occasional study of a composition intensively is 

* Atlantic Monthly, June, 1895, p. 813. 



TEiiJHING ENGLISH LITERATURE. 137 

strongly to be recommended. What I mean is to study, 
say, L' Allegro or a play of Shakespeare, with a view of get- 
ting out of it all there is in it. Still, it is not true that 
"all is in all." Bacon's generalization — some books are 
to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be 
chewed and digested — is a good rule for the schoolroom. 
If we select only books of his third class, much of the 
chewing and digesting must be deferred until the school 
has been left behind. The saying that " the child should 
pass by nothing without thoroughly understanding it," 
is one of those pedagogical half-truths that are so cur- 
rent, like the maxim " Never tell the child anything that 
he can find out for himself." 

Mr. Hudson protests vigorously against making litera- 
ture a subject for recitation.* This is right, provided we 
are to take the word " recitation " in its strict sense. He 
recommends what he calls " exercises," " the pupils read- 
ing the author under the direction, correction, and ex- 
planation of the teacher. The thing is to have the pupils, 
with the teacher's help and guidance, commune with the 
au^thor while in class, and quietly drink in the sense and 
spirit of his workmanship." Such exercises, however, 
should be supplemented by summaries, arguments, and 
written essays on selected points of interest. It follows 
that, as a rule, the pupils will answer their questions with 

* Professor Laurie demands, " Why do so many teachers make 
lessons of everything ? " He protests against the " dissection " of a 
great writer, and indignantly asks : " How can you expect any one to 
enjoy Lycidas, or Portia's speech, or Hamlet's soliloquy, or Tintern 
Abbey, or the Ode to Duty, if they read ten lines a day — have to 
learn by heart a lot of notes (philological and antiquarian), and then 
begin to mangle the passages by constructing parsing and analysis 
tables — finally, perhaps, resorting to the degrading process of par- 
aphrasing ? "—(P. 115.) 



138 TEACHlXa THE LANGUAGE-A51TS. 

their texts open before them. To compel them to cram 
up for the exercise would defeat the whole purpose. Mr. 
Hudson does not require, but commonly advises, his pupils 
to read the author before coming to the exercise. " Such 
preparation is indeed well, but not necessary." On this 
point the best teachers will hardly agree with him. As 
much as any exercise, literature needs preparation. The 
ill adaptation of the real study of literature to the pur- 
poses of the conventional recitation is one reason why so 
little of it has hitherto been found in the schools. Many 
teachers can grind on grammar, philology, or definitions, 
who do not see their way to teaching the conceptions 
of individual minds expressed in a permanent form of 
words. 

What has been said about recitations leads directly to 
another matter. Professor Laurie charges the Oxford 
dons with mistaking the question, " Can literature be 
taught ? " for the question, " Can literature be examined 
on ? " The distinction is an important one, and the mis- 
take is by no means confined to Oxford. Literature is a 
poor subject for the conventional examiner, just as it is a 
poor subject for the teacher who spends his time in merely 
hearing lessons. It is too indefinite and intangible. You 
can examine on the history of literature and ask many 
important questions about literary masterpieces, but how 
can you reach the mental growth that comes to the mind 
from silently feeding on ideas and beauty? The results 
of the study will declare themselves to the discerning in 
time, but they can not be summed up at the end of the 
term in an examination paper. 

Of course;, I do not mean that literature, as such, can 
not be examined on. I mean only that the examiner must 
not look for such an examination as he would expect in 
science, in mathematics, or even in the classical and mod- 



TEACHlNa ENGLISH LITERATURE. 139 

ern literatures. He must adapt his questions to the real 
nature of the work ; must take into account the writer's 
aim, sources, and execution ; must look to connections of 
thought, to cause and effect, to scope and tendency, and 
must expect general rather than specific answers. The 
process will test the pupil's grasp of mind and literary 
appreciation rather than his technical knowledge. It can 
not be doubted, either, that the ill adaptation of literature 
to the purposes of strict examination has had a marked 
effect in turning teachers of the subject to grammar and 
philology, and that it was formerly influential in causing 
the history of literature to be preferred to literature itself 
as a subject of school study. It is so difficult for many 
minds to believe that any valuable education work is be- 
ing done, unless it can be measured out in examination 
papers ! 

Good sense protests, too, against the foolish haste and 
impatience that play so large a part in American educa- 
tion. In no other subject, perhaps, is it so important for 
parent, teacher, or pupil to be content to abide his time. 
Some one has compared the constant questioning of a child 
about a fact or an idea that has found lodgment in his 
mind to pulling up the beanstalks in the garden to see 
whether they are growing. I am not quite sure that the 
analogy is a happy one, but if it holds anywhere it holds 
in teaching literature. It may be a question whether the 
doctrine of natural or negative education, which Eousseau 
carried to such an absurd extent, be not a needed correc- 
tion of our self-conscious processes. We express our ped- 
agogical ideas in metaphors that react upon our ideas, and 
so influence practice. The conception of education as 
exercise resulting in strength needs to be supplemented by 
the conception of education 2^'^ feeding resulting in growth. 
The processes of real culture are deep, silent, and uncon- 



140 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

scious ; that is the least valuable part of an education 
whicli is most on the surface ; and the strongest argument 
that can be advanced for teaching literature is the fact 
that thus a habit will be formed and some material accu- 
mulated which will support and gladden life when pupils 
have passed out of the school into the world, and have 
forgotten their more technical studies. 

It happened that the history of literature got into the 
schools before literature itself. This was due to a variety 
of causes, some of which have been suggested. Shaw's 
Outlines of English Literature was the pioneer book in 
the field. This was all wrong. " Matter before form " is 
a sound maxim, and to-day, if time can be found for only 
one of the subjects, literature should by all means have 
the right of way. »Fortunately, the needed correction has 
now been made : literature is in the schools. Still, it is 
desirable to teach the history in a systematic way. It 
would hardly suffice to rely on such facts as would be 
taught, or could be taught, in connection with the works 
studied. The subject should be presented connectedly, 
in outline, and may fairly embrace authors whose works 
pupils have not studied, provided they have studied other 
authors in sufficient number.* But it must not be for- 
gotten that literature and the history of literature are 
different though related subjects. •^ 

I do not feel called upon to say how much time should 
be allotted to English literature, either in elementary 
grades or in high schools, and much less to lay out a 
course of study. My object is a more general and strictly 
pedagogical one. Besides, those questions have been often 
answered by the most competent experts. But I do deem 
it pertinent to offer one or two observations on the kind 

* Stopford Brooke's Primer will well answer for an outline. 



TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE. 141 

of literature that should be chosen for high-school use. 
If this use is properly regulated, there will be little trouble 
in the grades below. 

Observation has led me to the conclusion that teachers 
are sometimes too ambitious, attempting compositions 
that are too difficult for their pupils. Of Shakespeare, 
the second-grade plays should be preferred to the first- 
grade ones : Twelfth Kight, The Merchant of Venice, As 
You Like It, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, and Julius 
Caesar should precede Othello, Macbeth, and Hamlet. 
The great Shakespearean tragedies are psychological and 
ethical studies too profound for the high-school grade of 
mind. Something the same may be said of Hawthorne — 
choose the minor books rather than the major ones. Em- 
erson I have found in high schools, where he is entirely 
out of place. If selections are made from Carlyle, they 
should be essays that he wrote before he developed those 
extreme mannerisms of thought and diction which so 
strongly mark his later writings. Burke and Webster 
should be used with judgment. The Speech on Concilia- 
tion of America should be preferred to The Speech on the 
Nabob of Arcot's Debts, or The Reflections on the French 
Eevolution. The same may be said of Webster's First 
Bunker Hill Oration and Eeply to Hayne or his great 
legal arguments. Addison's and Irving's best papers, 
Macaulay's best essays, Longfellow's poems, Scott's novels 
and poems, Goldsmith, Milton's minor poems — these are 
sources little likely to be too largely drawn upon in 
schools. 

I have not thought it necessary to make a direct or 
formal argument showing that it is desirable to have liter- 
ature taught in the schools of the country. Much of the 
present chapter is indirectly an argument for such teach- 
ins:. But it should be said that literature has a distinct 



,142 TEACPllNG THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

place and a large place in education. Science brings the 
pupil into contact with the facts and laws of surrounding 
Nature. Philosophy spreads before him the facts and laws 
of his own being. Mathematics opens the door leading to 
the great world of quantity and so of measurement. His- 
tory unrolls the scroll of human events, and is occupied 
with probable knowledge. Language and grammar deal 
with the mechanism of thought, and so involve its nature 
and laws. Art is the study of beauty in objective forms. 
Literature is occupied with the human spirit as expressed 
in language. It is humanity. Its subject-matter is the 
conceptions of individual minds put in permanent forms 
of words. As Matthew Arnold said, it consists of the best 
things that men have thought and said. And, to state 
what literature is, is to assign the best of all reasons why 
it should be taught in schools. As said before, the pub- 
lic schools of the United States now cost the people $170,- 
000,000 a year, by far the largest sum ever expended by 
a single nation for such a purpose ; but the schools earn 
the money, provided they do measurably well these three 
things only : Teach the children of the land how to read, 
teach them what to read, and give them a love for what is 
good in English literature. 

The occasional study of a lesson intensively has been 
recommended. Such work will naturally take a wider 
range than purely literary study. Questions in grammar 
will often serve as keys to successful interpretation. This 
chapter may fitly close with an illustrative lesson. 

Likes from L'Allegro. 

1. Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 

2. Jest and youtlif ul Jollity, 

3. Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, 

4. Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 



TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE. 143 

5. Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 

6. And love to live in dimple sleek ; 

7. Sport that wrinkled Care derides, 

8. And Laughter holding both his sides. 

9. Come, and trip it, as you go, 

10. On the light fantastic toe ; 

11. And in thy right hand lead with thee 

12. The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty ; 

13. And, if I give thee honour due, 

14. Mirth, admit me of thy crew, 

15. To live with her, and live with thee, 

16. In unreproved pleasures free ; 

17. To hear the lark begin his flight, 

18. And, singing, startle the dull night, 

19. From his watchtower in the skies, 

20. Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 

21. Then to come, in spite of sorrow, 

22. And at my window bid good-morrow, 

23. Through the sweetbrier or the vine, 

24. Or the twisted eglantine, 

25. While the cock, with lively din, 

26. Scatters the rear of darkness thin ; 

27. And to the stack, or the barn door, 

28. Stoutly struts his dames before ; 

29. Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
80. Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, 

31. From the side of some hoar hill, 

32. Through the high wood echoing shrill : 

33. Sometimes walking, not unseen, 

34. By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 

35. Right against the eastern gate, 

36. Where the great Sun begins his state, 

37. Robed in flames and amber light, 

38. The clouds in thousand liveries dight ; 

39. While the ploughman, near at hand, 

40. Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 

41. And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 

42. And the mower whets his scythe, 

43. And every shepherd tells his tale 

44. Under the hawthorn in the dale. 



144 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

These lines suggest many interesting questions as to 
the meaning and form of words, the force of expressions, 
and the nature and connection of the thought. The fol- 
lowing are given : — 

1. What is a nymph ? How many nymphs are men- 
tioned in the exercise ? What are their names ? Why 
is the second one called by the name given to her ? 

2. How many syllables in " wreathed," line 4, and why? 

3. What is the construction of the nouns in lines 2, 3, 
4 ? Why are these things in particular mentioned ? Who 
is Hebe ? And why is she here introduced ? 

5. Why do " sport " and " care," line 7, begin with 
capitals? What is the subject of " deride," same line, and 
why do you think so ? 

6. Why is " Laughter" presented as holding his sides? 

7. Line 9, who is to come ? 

8. Explain " fantastic toe," line 10. 

9. Give the construction of " me," line 14. 

10. What do " to live," line 15, " to hear," line 17, and 
" to come," line 21, modify ? 

11. Answer the same questions for "listening," line 29, 
and " walking," line 33. 

12. How can one hear a lark " begin " his flight, 
line 17? 

13. Explain " startle the dull night." 

14. What idea do you get from " watchtower," line 
19 ? Whose watchtower is it ? 

15. Explain the expression " dapple dawn," line 20. 

16. Explain lines 21-24. 

17. What clauses are introduced by ''• while," lines 25 
and 39? and how far does the force of the adverb extend 
in either case ? 

18. What does the poet mean by line 2G ? 

19. Explain line 30. 



TEACHING ENGLISH LITERATURE. 145 

20. What is the " hoar hill " of line 31 ? 

21. Why does the poet introduce the expression " not 
unseen," line 33 ? To whom does it relate ? 

22. Explain the expression " eastern gate," line 35. 

23. Why is light called " amber," line 37 ? 

24. Line 38, what is the meaning of " dight " ? 

25. What is the meaning of " furrowed land," line 40 ? 

26. What picture do you get from lines 33-38? 

27. Explain the last two lines of the exercise. 

28. Point out the lines that give the finest picture in. 
the above exercise. 

29. What contrast do you observe in the pictures pre- 
sented in lines 33-38, and 39-44? 

More general questions than these may be asked, pro- 
vided they are within the student's range of knowledge. 
Who wrote L'Allegro ? Name the companion poem. 
What do the two names mean ? Show that the names are 
descriptive of the poems. Show that the machinery, the 
scenery, and the tone of the two poems are consonant with 
the two leading thoughts of the poet. Why does the poet 
in L'Allegro take morning for the time of the scene? 
Why in the companion poem night ? 

How many questions should be asked on a lesson is a 
matter of judgment. It will be observed that the above 
is not given as a model for the daily lesson, but as a model 
of an occasional intensive lesson. In these matters noth- 
ing can take the place of good sense in the teacher. 

Note. — Remarking upon the tendency to bury the literary mas- 
terpieces under wagon-loads of commentary and discussion, Mr. 
Frederic Harrison exclaims : " Alas ! the Paradise Lost is lost 
again to us beneath an inundation of graceful academic verse, 
sugary stanzas of ladylike prettiness, and ceaseless explanations in 
more or less readable prose of what John Milton meant or did not 
mean, or what he saw or did not see, who married his great-aunt, 



146 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

and why Adam or Satan is like that or unlike the other. We read 
a perfect library about the Paradise Lost, but the Paradise Lost 
itself we do not read."( — The Choice of Books, p. 14.) 

At the same time. Professor Corson, who can hardly find words 
to express his disapproval of that study of literature which sticks 
in the bark and multiplies useless questions, still holds that the 
grammar of a poem is an element in its study. " In Gray's Elegy," 
he says, "there are several grammatical constructions which need 
to be particularly looked into." He quotes these stanzas — 

" But in dark corners of her palace stood 
Uncertain shapes ; and unawares 
On white-eyed phantasms weeping tears of blood, 
And horrible nightmares, 

" And hollow shades enclosing hearts of flame 
And, with dim-greeted foreheads all, 
On corpses three months old, at noon she came, 
That stood against the wall " — 

and remarks that "the adverb 'unawares' in the first of these 
stanzas qualifies ' came ' in the second, they being separated to the 
extent of five verses ; ' came ' is the antecedent of the preposition 
' on,' immediately following ' unawares.' The relative clause ' that 
stood against the wall ' is separated from its antecedent ' corpses ' 
by the predication ' at noon she came.' "—(Atlantic Monthly, June, 
1895, p. 813 ; The Aims of Literary Study, pp. 129-130.) 



CHAPTEE XVI. 
THE functio:n' of English grammar. 

Helpful pedagogical discussion of English grammar 
must take account of the nature of grammar in general. 
"What is grammar ? What is its educational function or 
value ? Why should English grammar be taught in the 
schools of the country ? 

Unfortunately, antiquity gives us little assistance in 
answering these questions. Dionysius Thrax, an Alexan- 
drian who taught Greek in Rome in the time of Pompey 
the Great, and who wrote the first i3ractical Greek gram- 
mar, and in fact the first practical grammar of any kind, 
that has come down to us, gave this definition : 

" Grammar is an experimental knoAvledge of the usages 
of language as generally current among poets and prose 
writers. It is divided into six parts : (I) Trained reading, 
with due regard to prosody [i. e., aspiration, accentuation, 
quantity, emphasis, metre, etc.] ; (2) exposition according 
to poetic figures [literary criticism] ; (3) ready statement 
of dialectical peculiarities and allusions [philology, geog- 
raphy, history, mythology] ; (4) discovery of etymologies ; 

(5) accurate account of analogies [accidence and syntax] ; 

(6) criticism of poetical productions, which is the no- 
blest part of the grammatic art [ethics, politics, strategv, 
etc.]." * 



* Davidson : Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals, p. 214. 
A translation of the Grammar of Dionysius Thrax, by Thomas 

147 



148 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

The general definition we might accept, but Thrax's 
analysis is far too comprehensive ; it includes not merely 
what we call grammar, but also artistic reading, literary 
criticism, philology, etc., and the discussion of poetical 
productions. Still, Thrax was only following the usage 
current among the Greeks. VpafjifiarLKT], as taught by 
the ypafjifxaTLK6<;, was the comprehensive study of litera- 
ture. The more elementary part of the subject was some- 
times called ypa/x/xaTto-rtKiJ, and was taught by the ypafjb- 
/xarto-TTJ?, while the more general name was reserved for 
the nobler portions. In this matter, as in so many others, 
the Romans followed the Greeks. Quintilian says the boy 
who has attained facility in reading and writing should 
next take up the grammarians, by which he means the 
teachers of language and literature. He divides grammar 
into " the art of speaking correctly, and the illustration of 
the poets," including speaking in writing. In his exposi- 
tion of the second division, conformably to the general 
habit of his mind, he includes the prose writers as well as 
the poets, and mentions music, astronomy, philosophy, and 
eloquence as falling within the purview of grammar. Were 
we to accept his scheme, we should certainly agree with 
him that no man should " look down on the elements of 
grammar as small matters ; ... to those entering the re- 
cesses, as it were, of this temple there will appear much 
sympathy on points which may not only sharpen the wits 
of boys, but may exercise even the deepest erudition and 
knowledge." * 

In the main, antiquity settled the usage for the middle 
ages. Still, there was a considerable contraction of the 

Davidson, with notes, will be found in The Journal of Speculative 
Philosophy, vol. viii, pp. 326-339. See also Max Miiller, Lectures on 
the Science of Language, first series, lecture iii. 
* Institutes of Oratory, i, iv, 1, 2, G. 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 149 

field ; grammar was put in the trivium, not the quad- 
rivium. It was considered a formal and not a real study, 
which was in perfect accord with the tendencies of the 
times. 

It is easy to see why grammar, as the Greeks and 
Latins understood it, should be taught in schools, but not 
so easy to see why it should be so taught when we limit it 
as we are in the habit of doing to-day. This is the some- 
what diflScult question that we are now to consider. 

Lindley Murray, whose English Grammar first ap- 
peared in 1795, gave this definition : " English grammar 
is the art of speaking and writing the English language 
with propriety." I quote this book because it was more 
generally used in its time, both in England and America, 
than any similar book ever written ; because it exercised 
a great influence upon succeeding writers, and because in 
respect to its view of the subject it fairly represented the 
grammatical tradition that had been delivered to its author. 

Kirkham's English Grammar, first published in 1823, 
succeeded Murray's in the schools of the United States. 
Kirkham first defines grammar as the science of language, 
and then on the opposite side of the same leaf says, " Eng- 
lish grammar is the art of speaking and writing the Eng- 
lish language with propriety." IN'o better illustration than 
this could be given of the confusion that has reigned in 
men's minds on this subject. In treatment, Kirkham fol- 
lowed Murray slavishly.* 

* It is not improbable that modern definitions of grammar, as 
well as of other sciences, have been influenced by the ancient use of 
the word "art." "It must be borne in mind," remarks Professor 
Davidson, " that the Greek rexvrj, art, corresponds almost exactly to 
what we mean by science." — Aristotle and Ancient Educational 
Ideals, p. 289, note. The same may be said of the Latin ars, at least 
in relation to the higher education. 
12 



150 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

As remarked in Chapter I, it is now well understood 
by competent scholars and teachers that the traditionary 
definition of grammar is false, and that the traditionary 
mode of teaching it is of little practical value. As to 
the second point, two or three facts are decisive. One is 
that good speakers and writers are not consciously guided 
in their use of the vernacular by grammatical definitions 
and rules. Another is that many good speakers and 
writers have never learned or even studied grammar at 
all. This was em23hatically the case in antiquity, when 
grammar as we teach it was unknown. Another fact is 
that a knowledge of grammar is no guarantee of propri- 
ety in either speech or writing. It would be hard to say 
whether those who speak and write good Euglish, but who 
can not parse, or those who parse well, but can not speak 
or write good English, is the more numerous host, ^[en 
learn to use their vernacular by using it ; the controlling 
factors are imitation and habit workins^ tlirousfh associa- 
tion and literature. Speech and writing are arts, and 
must be learned by speaking and writing. The rule is, 
that those persons who habitually hear good language 
spoken, and who habitually read good literature, learn to 
speak with propriety. Dr. Fitch is nearly right when he 
says that whoever tries to learn or to teach grammar as 
an art is doomed to disappointment. "No doubt there 
is a sense, and a very true sense," says he, " in which all 
careful investigation into the structure of words and their 
relations gives precision to speech. But this is an indirect 
process. The direct operation and use of grammar rules 
in improving our speech and making it correct can hardly 
be said to exist at all." * 

I deem it important still further to fortify this 



* Lectures on Teaching, iv. 



TUE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 151 

main position. Professor W. D. Whitney bears this tes- 
timony : 

" That the leading object of the study of English gram- 
mar is to teach the correct use of English, is, in my view, 
an error, and one which is gradually becoming removed, 
giving way to the sounder opinion that grammar is the 
reflective study of language, for a variety of purposes, of 
which correctness in writing is only one, and a secondary 
or subordinate one — by no means unimportant, but best 
attained when sought indirectly. It should be a pervad- 
ing element in the whole school and home training of the 
young to make them use their own tongue with accuracy 
and force ; and, along with any special drilling directed 
to this end, some of the rudimentary distinctions and rules 
of grammar are conveniently taught ; but that is not the 
study of grammar, and it will not bear the intrusion of 
much formal grammar without being spoiled for its own 
ends. It is constant use and practice, under never-failing 
watch and correction, that make good writers and speak- 
ers; the ap]3lication of direct authority is the most efficient 
corrective. Grammar has its part to contribute, but rather 
in the higher than in the lower stages of the work. One 
must be a somewhat reflective user of language to amend 
even here and there a point by grammatical reasons, and 
no one ever changed froui a bad speaker to a good one by 
applying the rules of grammar to what he said." * 

Mr. Herbert Spencer enlarges the view so as to include 
rhetoric. 

"As Dr. Latham, condemning the usual school drill 
in Lindley Murray, rightly remarks, 'Gross vulgarity is 
a fault to be prevented, but the proper prevention is to 
be got from habit — not rules.' Similarly there can be 



* Preface to Essentials of English Grammar. 



152 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

little question that good composition is far less dependent 
upon acquaintance with its laws than upon practice and 
natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and 
a sensitive ear will go far toward making all rhetorical 
precepts needless. He who daily hears and reads well- 
framed sentences will naturally, more or less, tend to use 
similar ones. And where there exists any mental idiosyn- 
crasy — where there is a deficient verbal memory, or an 
inadequate sense of logical dependence, or but little per- 
ception of order, or a lack of constructive ingenuity — no 
amount of instruction will remedy the defect. Neverthe- 
less, some practical result may be expected from a famil- 
iarity with the principles of style. The endeavour to con- 
form to laws may tell, though slowly. And if in no other 
way, yet, as facilitating revision, a knowledge of the thing 
to be achieved — a clear idea of what constitutes a beauty, 
and what a blemish — can not fail to be of service." * 

Professor Whitney tells us that grammar is the reflec- 
tive study of language ; that is, grammar is the science of 
language, the laws of correct expression. Or, to quote his 
technical definition: "English grammar maybe defined 
as a description of those usages of the English language 
which are now approved by the best writers and speakers." 

The old writers set the example of dividing English 
grammar into four parts— Orthography, Etymology, Syn- 
tax, and Prosody — and the new ones commonly followed 
their example. The first and last of these divisions have 
nothing whatever to do with the subject ; the only reasons 
for including them in the text-book are tradition and the 
fact that they contain a certain amount of useful informa- 
tion about the English language that authors do not know 
what else to do with. Grammar is limited to etymology, 

* The Philosophy of Style. 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 153 

or the doctrine of words, and to syntax, or the doctrine of 

sentences. 

Two causes conspired to break down the authority of 
the scholastic grammar. One was the conviction borne in 
upon teachers that it was largely barren of practical re- 
sult ; the other, the discovery that English grammar to a 
great extent is an artificial and fictitious creation. This 
discovery came about through the application to the lan- 
guage of scientific method. The traditionary English 
grammar was created, not by an original inquiry con- 
cerning the nature of the English language, but by imi- 
tating Latin grammar. "The manuals by which gram- 
mar was first taught in English were not properly 
English grammars. They were translations of the Latin 
accidence, and were designed to aid British youth in ac- 
quiring knowledge of the Latin language rather than 
accuracy in the use of their own. Two languages were 
often combined in one book, for the purpose of teaching 
sometimes both together and sometimes one through the 
other." * One of the first, and perhaps the most cele- 
brated of these books, was attributed to William Lily, 
although it appears to have been the work of a plurality 
of authors. It was called " King Henry's Grammar," from 
the fact that Henry YIII commanded it to be taught 
throughout his realm as the common study of grammatical 
construction. So powerful was the Latin tradition, and 
so imperfect the current knowledge of English, that even 
scholars failed to see that, save in a general sense, Latin 
grammar could not be a model for English grammar. 

Eor example, in the matter of accidence Latin is called 
an inflected, English a non-inflected, language. Anglo- 
Saxon, which furnishes the framework of English and a 

* Brown : The Grammar of English Grammars, chap. ix. 



154 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

large part of its vocabulary, was an inflected language, but 
many of its inflections have been worn away, and nothing 
has taken their place. Naturalized Latin and Greek 
words have lost nearly all their original inflections, and 
become assimilated to the body of the language. As a 
result, what are called " agreement " and " government " 
have fared hardly in the wear and tear Of a thousand years. 
A great number of the distinctions that the old gram- 
marians made, on the assumption that English grammar 
must conform to the Latin model, have no existence in 
fact. We still go through the motions of saying, " I love, 
you love, he loves, we love, you love, they love " ; never- 
theless, there are here only two forms, while the Latin 
verb in the same mode and tense makes six. Still more 
artificial does the conjugation-system appear when we 
take into account the modes and tenses. Then we decline 
nouns making their plural in s or es as though there were 
six forms, while in reality there are but two. The per- 
sonal pronoun alone offers a resemblance somewhat close 
to the Latin accidence, 7ie, his, /u*m, while the adjective 
offers the widest possible departure from it. 

Similar were the results when men came to study more 
thoroughly English syntax. They now saw that many of 
the relations summed up in the traditionary rules exist 
only in name. Take, for example, Kirkham's Eule III, 
" The nominative case governs the verb," and his Eule 
IV, " The verb must agree with its nominative in number 
and person." In Latin these rules mean that there is a 
certain correspondence in form between the noun and the 
verb when one is the subject and the other the predicate 
of the sentence, but in English the most that they can 
mean is that occasionally this is true, while in most cases 
it is not true. These rules absolutely express no facts 
whatever when they are applied to the past and the future 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAK. 15 5 

tenses of the yerb. Much the same is true of Kule XIII, 
" Personal pronouns must agree with the nouns for which 
they stand in gender and number," and Eule XIV, " Rela- 
tive pronouns agree with their antecedents in gender, per- 
son, and number." Eule XX, "Active transitive verbs 
govern the objective case," would mean in Latin that such 
a verb would control the form of the noun immediately 
dependent upon it ; in English it means either nothing 
or something wholly different. In fact, there is hardly a 
shred of meaning in the doctrine of English case, pro- 
vided we take the word in the Latin sense. In the classical 
languages the cases are departures or variations of sub- 
stantives and adjectives from their first or normal forms, 
said departures expressing certain relations of thought ; * 
but in English case has been commonly based on another 
idea than form. Thus Kirkham : " Case, when applied to 
nouns and pronouns, means the different state, situation, 
or position they have in relation to other words." Since 
form is so slight a factor in the English cases it is natural 
that there should be, as there is, a difference of opinion as 
to the number of cases in English grammar. In Latin or 

* " By Aristotle irrcocris was applied to any derived, inflected, or 
extended form of the simple ovofia or p^/xa (i. e., the nominative of 
nouns, the present indicative of verbs), such as the oblique cases of 
nouns, the variations of adjectives due to gender and comparison, 
also the derived adverb (e. g., SiKaius was a irraxris of Sikoios), the 
other tenses and modes of the verb, including also its interrogative 
form. The grammarians, following the Stoics, restricted tttSxxis to 
nouns, and included the nominative under the designation." — (Dr. 
Murray : A New English Dictionary.) 

riTwo-ts is derived from tt^tttoj, TritrT^iv, to fall, and means, first, a 
falling or fall, and secondly, a grammatical inflection, as just ex- 
plained. The Romans translated the word by casus from cado, 
cadere. Hence our word case. The original idea was that a case 
was a departure or falling away from some standard or first form. 



156 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

Greek, or in any language, where the form decides, such 
a question could not possibly arise. 

Not only has the authority of the scholastic English 
grammar been pretty thoroughly broken down, but the 
teaching of English grammar in the schools has been dis- 
credited. While it has not been thrown out of the schools 
generally, it has become less prominent, and the question 
is often asked why it should be retained at all. Accord- 
ingly, those who believe in its retention are called upon 
to bring forth their strong reasons. 

1. English grammar puts the pupil in possession of 
much interesting knowledge pertaining to the vernacular. 
That would be a mistaken education which, while furnish- 
ing the mind with a store of facts concerning material 
things, human life, history, and the like, should wholly 
neglect the vesture in which these facts are clothed. 
Grammatical facts are mental facts, and it is certainly as 
well worth one's while to know that he expresses his 
thoughts in nouns, verbs, etc., as it is to know the names 
and properties of strange plants and animals. As Mr. 
Metcalfe says in the preface to his English Grammar : 
" In one who claims to be a scholar ignorance of the his- 
tory and structure of his language is no more excusable 
than ignorance in any other department of knowledge." 

2. Like the other sciences, grammar has disciplinary 
value. The study involves a peculiar exercise of the powers 
of observation — the forms of words, idioms, and sentences, 
and of the realities that are behind them, distinctions, 
meanings, and relations. These forms and relations de- 
velop a kind of sense or perception that external objects 
do not develop. Secondly, the study involves also a vigor- 
ous e-xercise of the logical powers — analysis, abstraction, 
comparison, inference. Grammar is the application of 
logic to a large and important class of facts. The powers 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 15 7 

of thought are developed by studying the relations of 
objects, external and internal. The first rank far below 
the second in educational value. It is only when we can 
employ thought upon general relations, which are always 
abstract, that we begin to U7isense or f/ematerialize the 
mind, and so introduce it to the sjohere of scientific think- 
ing. The best meter of intellectual power is one's ability 
to think general thoughts. Nothing is more characteristic 
of the immature mind than the habit of tliingmg — that is, 
of thinking in the forms of sense-objects or things, con- 
crete and particular. Power of abstract thought is pro- 
moted most directly and effectively, as Professor Laurie 
says, " by formal or abstract studies, such as arithmetic, 
mathematics, grammar, logic ; and this because the occu- 
pation of the mind with the abstract is the nearest ap- 
proach to the occupation of the mind with itself as an 
organism of thinking." * Grammar is indeed the only 
metaphysical study that a large majority of people ever 
pursue ; and if that would be a defective information 
which ignored the facts of language, a/or^ion would that 
be a defective discipline which omitted its relations. 

Still another point may be urged. It is sometimes 
said by those who wish to distinguish English from the 
highly inflected tongues, that it is a grammarless lan- 
guage. The fact is rather that its grammar is peculiar 
and characteristic. In the classical languages, relations 
are generally expressed by means of forms called " end- 
ings," the position of words in the sentence having little to 
do with meanings. Xo matter in what order we place the 
words piter^ puellam^ amat^ in a sentence, they mean the 
same thing, and can mean nothing else ; while the corre- 
sponding English words, to be perfectly clear, must stand 

* Lectures on Linguistic Method, p. 52. 



158 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

iu one certain order. The Greek and Latin constructions 
are, so to speak, framed into one another Hke pieces of 
timber in a building, and it is either hard or impossible to 
mistake the principal relations of the sentence. But since 
thought relations in English are so largely dependent upon 
the position of words and the spirit of the passage, as 
compared with the more mechanical languages, its gram- 
mar is peculiarly valuable as a discipline. As one has 
said, " The grammar of English is a very subtle grammar, 
and its usages, if difficult to register, demand all the more 
investigation and study." This pertinent passage is from 
John Stuart Mill : 

" Consider for a moment what grammar is. It is the 
most elementary part of logic. It is the beginning of the 
analysis of the thinking process. The principles and rules 
of grammar are the means by which the forms of language 
are made to correspond with the universal forms of 
thought. The distinctions between the various parts of 
speech, between the cases of nouns, the moods and tenses 
of verbs, the functions of particles, are distinctions in 
thought, not merely in words. Single nouns and verbs 
express objects and events, many of which can be cognised 
by the senses ; but the modes of putting nouns and verbs 
together express the relations of objects and events, which 
can be cognised only by the intellect ; and each different 
mode corresponds to a different relation. The structure 
of every sentence is a lesson in logic." * 

It is in the line of discipline that Professor Greene's 
reasons for " studying grammar, or rather language through 
the structure of sentences," mainly run, e. g. : " As a sen- 
tence is the expression of a thought, and as the elements 
of a sentence are expressions for the elements of thought. 



* Inaugural Address at St. Andrews. 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. I59 

the pupil who is taught to separate a sentence into its ele- 
ments is learning to analyze thought, and consequently to 
think." * 

3. Grammar, then, is the logic of speech. The basis 
of grammatical analysis is logical analysis. Grammar is 
the form that logic assumes in the interpretation or 
construction of language, and so is tlie only strictly 
logical study with which most persons who attend school 
ever form a practical acquaintance. It does not deal 
merely with single words, but also with combinations of 
words. It hinges upon relations, no matter whether these 
are expressed by means of inflections or by other devices. 
In fact, grammar is in some respects a more searching 
investigation of thought than logic itself, because it em- 
braces all the modifications of thought expressed in the 
proposition, while logic embraces only the essential rela- 
tions. Hence, the relations of grammar to all kinds of 
hermeneutics, or interpretation, are commonplaces. Me- 
lanchthon wrote, " Scripture can not be understood theo- 
logically unless it is understood grammatically." Luther 
held that true theology was merely an application of gram- 
mar, and Scaliger maintained that ignorance of grammar 
was the cause of all religious differences. And so in juris- 
prudence the legal sense of language is the grammatical 
sense. Montaigne even expressed the opinion that most 
of the occasions of disturbance in the world are gram- 
matical ones. It is not meant, of course, that a great 
theologian, or a great jurist, is necessarily a great technical 
grammarian, any more than that he is necessarily a great 
formal logician ; the meaning is, rather, that such theolo- 
gian or jurist must needs be a master of those methods 
or habits of thought which constitute the foundation of 

■* See preface to his English Analysis. 



IGO TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

gnimmar and logic. Still less is it meant that the study 
of grammar can taJie the place of native capacity for in- 
terpretation ; as well say that a blind man can use a tele- 
sco|)e to advantage as that logic is a substitute for power 
to think. 

4. In a previous chapter some remarks were made 
about etymologies and words as sources of history. These 
topics are phases of historical grammar, which has come 
to be such an important subject of investigation. The 
Conference on English, so frequently referred to in these 
pages, recommends that, in the high school, attention 
shall be paid to the history and geography of the Eng- 
lish-sj)eaking people so far as these illustrate the develop- 
ment of the English language.* Something of this work 
can be well done if made sufficiently elementary. More- 
over, it is easy to connect the history of language with 
history in general, and with historical geography, which 
draws so largely upon language and is so fruitful of inter- 
est, f The extent to which the historical and compara- 
tive study of English can be profitably carried on will 
turn largely, of course, upon the extent to which the 
pupil enters into the study of foreign languages. 

5. Thus far we have not discovered any direct prac- 
tical connection between the study of English grammar 
and the use of the English language. It may be fairly 
urged, however, that any activity of mind which enlists 
clear thinking is sure more or less to influence the lan- 
guage in which the thinking is not only expressed, but in 
fact carried on. Still more, such effect is likely to be 
marked when the subject-matter of thought is thought- 

* Report of Committee of Ten, pp. 91, 92. 

f See Taylor : Names and Places ; Blackie : Historical Geogra- 
phy ; Hinsdale : How to Study and Teach History, chaps, xiii, xiv. 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 16 L 

processes and their expression. If Dr. Blair is right iu 
saying that learning to compose with accuracy is learning 
to think with accuracy, and Professor Greene in saying 
that the pupil who is taught to separate a sentence into 
its elements is learning to analyze thought, and so to think, 
— then, conversely, learning to think and to analyze are 
learning to compose. Professor Laurie declares the prac- 
tical use of English grammar to be, first, the enabling a 
pupil the better to grasp the language of literature ; and, 
secondly, the enabling him better to express his own expe- 
rience and thoughts, when he has any thoughts to express. 
He also contends that early " a child should, by the help 
of numerous examples, be taught to recognise the subject 
and the predication regarding it — the whole logical sub- 
ject, that is to say, and the whole predicate — as going to 
constitute a sentence or proposition. This formal condi- 
tion of a possible sentence can not only be taught very 
early, but it is for practical reasons desirable to teach it 
early. A recognition of this fundamental fact of both 
grammar and logic is very helpful in enabling children to 
understand what they read, and to express what they de- 
sire to express." * This is the first grammatical fact to 
be taught — that no thought can be expressed unless some- 
thing is said of something ; nor can this fact be properly 
taught without the development of some skill in detect- 
ing these essential elements, the subject and the predicate 
of the sentence. 

6. The idea that the old grammarians put first has 
been reserved for the last, viz., the relation of the study 
of grammar to the student's use of the vernacular. 

Professor Whitney says that, in connection with special 
drill looking to accuracy and force in the use of speech, 

* Lectures on Linguistic Method, p. 56. 



162 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

some of the rudimentary distinctions and rules of gram- 
mar are conveniently taught. He does not say that con- 
stant use and joractice will make good speakers and writers, 
but constant use and practice under never-failing ivatch 
and correction. The application of direct authority, he 
says, is the most efficient corrective. Three things are 
obvious : that watch and correction are essential ; that 
there must be a standard of judgment ; and that this 
standard must at first be furnished by a living agent or 
other example. What Mr. Spencer says of rhetoric is just 
as true of grammar : some practical result may be expected 
from a familiarity with principles ; the endeavour to con- 
form to laws will tell, though slowly ; and if in no other 
way, yet as facilitating revision, a knowledge of the thing 
to be achieved — a clear knowledge of what is accuracy and 
what is inaccuracy — can not fail to be of service. How 
much room there is for the exemplification of these ideas 
in teaching English, a little consideration will show. 

No matter how good one's opportunities to acquire the 
vernacular in childhood may be, he is almost certain to 
form some erroneous habits. These originate partly in 
imitation and partly in the nature of our language. The 
idea of regularity seizes the child's mind at an early age. 
He becomes entangled in the irregular verbs, and in the 
nouns and pronouns. In households and in primary 
schools such errors will disappear in great part under the 
discipline of correction, but not wholly so. Few persons 
can be found who do not need that discipline of self-criti- 
cism which accompanies the study of grammar when prop- 
erly taught. What has just been said is more and more 
applicable as we descend the scale of intelligence and cul- 
tivation. A great majority of children who come from 
homes that are accounted intelligent, and that are really 
so measured by a practical standard, bring with them 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMxMAIl. 1G3 

to school numerous errors of pronunciation, etymology, 
and syntax, to say nothing of spelling, many of which are 
downright barbarisms and vulgarisms. To the still lower 
stratum of cultivation we do not need to go. Now, what 
can be done for these children? First, those agencies 
that affect language unconsciously must be stimulated ; 
interest the child in good conversation, in good public 
discourse, and in well-written books, thus putting him in 
the way of sloughing off or growing out of some of his 
bad habits. Secondly, give him the benefit of the special 
drill and the never-failing watch and correction of which 
Professor Whitney speaks. For some years mere authority 
must prevail, but in time both rule and reason will play 
their part. Criticism will tend to impair somewhat that 
spontaneity which is essential to good expression, whether 
in talking, reading, or writing ; but it will not answer to 
allow bad grammar to run riot in the name of sponta- 
neity. The critical faculty should be keenly stimulated, 
involving the two elements of observation and correction. 
Nor should it be forgotten that the most helpful criticism 
is self-criticism, although it may not begin there. 

Something should be said of the correction of false 
syntax. Language is so largely a matter of imitation that 
it is folly to set persons who are forming their linguistic 
habits to correct errors to which they are not exposed. 
The current mode of teaching orthography is by way 
of the form-image presented to the eye ; written spelling 
is the vogue, and it is accounted bad practice to use 
copy that will serve to print false pictures on the mind. 
In learning to speak the vernacular, the sound-image is 
the great agent, and this is subject to the limitation before 
stated. The application of this principle to false syntax 
is obvious. 'No doubt these exercises, when intelligently 
conducted, tend to make the pupil observant and critical, 



164 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

but they may also tend to propagate the very errors that 
are corrected. As a matter of fact, however, the work is 
often unintelligible ; the pupil assumes that an example 
is faulty because it is found in bad company, and then 
guesses at the correction. Correction of bad syntax and 
of bad etymology should therefore be limited to errors to 
which the pupil is addicted or exposed. Real life will 
furnish the teacher an abundance of the very best material ; 
book " false syntax," to put it mildly, is of doubtful utility 
in the case of pupils who are studying grammar for a 
practical purpose. 

Such are the reasons that may be assigned for teach- 
ing grammar in elementary schools. Obviously, the ad- 
vantages set forth can be attained only when the teacher 
intelligently answers the questions : When ? How much ? 
What method ? Professor Laurie contends that the method 
of procedure must be real. 

" To be of any utility, either as a discipline, or as 
training, or as knowledge, grammar and rhetoric have 
to be studied through examples. Grammar has to be 
studied in and through sentences, and to be extracted 
from sentences by the pupil, if it is to be really taught; 
and so also rhetoric has to be studied in and through the 
masterpieces of literature, and extracted from them, if it 
is to be really taught. This last sentence, indeed, sums up 
the true significance of the Revival of the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries in the department of education." * 

Dean Colet, the founder of St. Paul's School, had said 
the same thing in substance long before. 

" In the beginning men spake not Latin because such 
[grammatical] rules were made, but, contrariwise, because 
men spake such Latin, upon that followed the rules, and 



* Lectures on Linguistic Method, p. 73. 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 165 

were made. That is to say, Latin speech was before the 
rules, and not the rules before the Latin speech. Where- 
fore, well- beloved masters and teachers of grammar, after 
the parts of speech sufficiently known in our schools, read 
and expound plainly unto your scholars good authors, and 
show to them [in] every word, and in every sentence, 
what they shall note and observe, warning them busily to 
follow and do like both in writing and in speaking ; and 
be to them your own self also speaking with them the 
pure Latin very present, and leave the rules ; for reading 
of good books, diligent information of learned masters, 
studious advertence and taking heed of learners, hearing 
eloquent men speak, and finally, busy imitation with 
tongue and pen, more availeth shortly to get the true elo- 
quent speech, than all the traditions, rules, and precepts 
of masters." * 

A few hints and suggestions as to method will be 
added. 

1. Formal or technical grammar is an abstract, meta- 
physical study, and the pupil should not enter upon it at 
too early an age. If he does, the time so spent is wholly 
or mainly lost, and future interest is impaired or alto- 
gether killed. Language exercises should form the regu- 
lar approach to grammar. 

2. The two main elements of the sentence may be 
taught in the fifth school year. That is, the child should 
be taught that every sentence has such elements, that they 
perform such and such functions, that there can be no 
sentence without them, that they form its framework or 
skeleton ; and in addition he should be taught to point 
out the subjects and predicates of simple sentences. To 
centre the young mind on the subject and the predicate 



* Quoted by Quick : Educational Reformers, pp. 533, 534. 
13 ' 



166 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

as tlie two things that are essential to the expression of 
thought, is an important step in education. 

3. In the sixth year the larger features of the doctrine 
of modifiers may be taught and illustrated ; also the prin- 
cipal parts of speech — the noun, the verb, the pronoun, 
the adjective, and the adverb — and the pupil be required 
to practise upon suitable examples. No book should be 
used, nothing need be said about grammar, and the work 
should be affiliated with the language lessons. 

4. Formal grammar with a text-book should begin 
with the seventh year. Etymology should first be taken 
up, if the sentence has been previously taught as recom- 
mended ; if no attention has been given to the sentence, 
then the work should begin with analysis as before, but 
should proceed more rapidly. 

5. For a time parsing and analysis should conform to 
definite models. This will secure regularity and thorough 
treatment. Afterward the two processes may be carried 
on more rapidly, dwelling only on the more difficult 
points. When a certain stage has been reached it is sheer 
waste of time to require a pupil to parse articles, to com- 
pare adjectives, to decline pronouns, and wearisomely to 
go through a prescribed formula even in handling the 
important etymological elements. The same may be said 
about analysis. Omit the nine questions that all can 
answer, and ask the tenth one that tests the knowledge of 
the class. In the high school, especially, a few questions 
skilfully directed will often lay open the whole structure 
of a sentence, and thus enable the class to move on. To 
guard against possible misapprehension, it may be well to 
say explicitly that parsing has an educational value. Pu- 
pils should be taught the facts and relations that are ex- 
pressed by inflections and by position, and the best way 
to do it is to require them to describe the words, telling 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 167 

what tliey are and naming their properties, for that is 
what parsing- is. Observation and reflection are also cul- 
tivated. 

6. Some pu]3ils tend to think that the world of gram- 
mar is an unreal world, invented by authors and teachers 
to confuse and distract them. Hence it is important, as 
Professor Laurie says, that the method shall be as real as 
possible. Emphasize the fact that grammar deals with 
real things and is not artificial. Good grammatical defi- 
nitions an(J rules express facts just as much as the defini- 
tions and rules of mathematics or physics ; and to teach 
grammar is to teach these facts. IS^owhere is it more 
important than here to preveut the pupil from filliug his 
mind with mere words. Verbal knowledge about material 
facts is bad enough ; verbal knowledge about words and 
sentences is even worse. It is an excellent plan to use 
the pupil's own original sentences, as it serves to make 
the work more real. 

7. In teaching grammar to elementary pupils no time 
should be given to controverted points or really difficult 
points ; the discussion of idiomatic constructions is wholly 
out of place ; instruction should deal only with what is 
plain and simple, or at least relatively so. In the high 
school more difiicult work may be entered upon ; but even 
here it will be waste of time to crack the hard gram- 
matical nuts that so much delight the experts. Such 
work belongs to a more mature state of mental devel- 
opment. 

8. The first sentences that are chosen for analysis should 
be isolated as well as easy ones. If not, the pupil is likely 
to become confused and to miss his way. But in the 
eighth grade, and still more in the high school, real litera- 
ture should be used as material. In this way pupils will 
get a much-needed lesson in the continuity of thought, 



168 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

and in that larger grammatical structure which extends 
be3^ond the sentence, while grammar will be relieved of 
something of its barrenness. A connection should be es- 
tablished between grammar and literature and reading. 
Some literary questions should be introduced into the ex- 
ercises and examination papers. Instead of putting down 
one or two disconnected sentences to be analyzed and 
parsed, place before the class a paragraph of prose or two 
or more stanzas of yerse. The kind of exercise here 
recommended will show pui:)ils that analysis is the great 
instrument of interpretation. 

One important question is left unanswered, save as 
the answer is involved in what has been said. This is 
the question : What should be taught for grammar ? In 
its details, the subject is much too large for this place. 

Some examples of grammatical questions that go to 
the heart of a composition will be found in illustrative 
exercises at the close of previous chapters. A further 
exercise is given in this place. 

Stanzas from Ten^nyson's Ode oin- the Death of 
THE Duke of Wellikgton. 

1. 

Bury the Great Duke 

With an empire's lamentation, 

Let ns bury the Great Duke 

To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation, 

Mourning when their leaders fall, 

Warriors carry the warrior's pall. 

And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall. 

2. 

Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore f 
Here, in streaming London's central roar. 
Let the sound of those he wrought for. 



THE FUNCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 109 

And the feet of those he fought for, 
Echo round his bones for evermore. 

3. 

Lead out the pageant : sad and slow, 

As fits an universal woe, 

Let the long, long procession go, 

And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow. 

And let the mournful martial music blow ; 

The last great Englishman is low. 

The Duke of Wellington is buried in St. Paul's, the 
Cathedral Church of London. These questions may be 
asked : — 

1. What empire is meant? What is an empire's 
lamentation ? Explain line 6, stanza 1. Explain " ham- 
let and hall." Why is London called "streaming"? 
What is meant by the " feet echoing," etc. ? What is a 
pageant ? 

2. Analyze the sentences of stanza 2. 

3. Give case and construction of " Great Duke," line 
1, " us," line 3, " pall," line 6, stanza 1 ; " whom," " Lon- 
don's," and " bones," in stanza 2. 

4. What parts of speech is " mourning " in lines 4 and 
5, first stanza ? 

5. Parse " warriors " and " warrior's " in line G of 
same stanza. 

6. What mode is " bury " in lines 1 and 3 ? 

7. What parts of speech are " sad " and " slow " in line 
1, stanza 3 ? 

8. Give the principal parts of the verbs in the last 
stanza ? 

This exercise is not above the eighth grade, provided 
the pupils have been properly taught. How many ques- 
tions shall be asked, and how extended a passage shall 



170 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

form the basis of the exercise, are questions of judgment 
for the teacher to answer, in which the strength of the 
pupils and the length of time that can be used will be 
controlling factors. When pupils are ready for such work 
as this, it is sheer folly to keep them grinding in the old- 
fashioned mill of analysis and parsing. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE PUi^CTIOiq" OF EHETOEIC. 

The history of rhetoric shows quite as much con- 
trariety of view on the part of writers as to the nature and 
scope of the subject as the history of grammar. A slight 
resume will answer our purpose. 

Aristotle, author of the first systematic treatise on the 
subject that has come down to us, delivers this definition : 
" A faculty of considering all the possible means of per- 
suasion on every subject." * He first inquires into the 
means employed in persuasion, and then treats of arrange- 
ment, style, and delivery. Quintilian, foremost of the 
Latin writers, considers rhetoric, oratory, and eloquence as 
the same thing, and gives this definition : " Oratory is the 
art of speaking well." f Dr. Campbell, like Quintilian, 
considers rhetoric and eloquence as coextensive. "The 
word ' eloquence,' in its greatest latitude," he says, " de- 
notes ' that art or talent by which the discourse is adapted 
to its end.' " % 

Dr. Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, 
which was once more generally used in English and 
American schools than any other text-book on its sub- 
ject, contains no definition. Dr. Whately's Elements of 
Rhetoric is consistently built up on this definition : 

* Book I, chap. ii. f Ibid, II, chap. xv. 

X Philosophy of Rhetoric, Book I, chap. i. 
171 



172 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE- ARTS. 

"The finding of suitable arguments to prove a given 
point, and the skilful arrangement of them, may be con- 
sidered as the immediate and proper province of rhetoric, 
and of that alone." * 

These definitions are all in terms of art. Still, it 
would be a great mistake to suppose that the books from 
which they are taken all conform to that view of the 
subject. Aristotle's Ehetoric is thoroughly scientific, 
although not lacking in rules and practical suggestions. 
Quintilian's Institutes, while not destitute of principles, 
is rather a book of methods and practical suggestions. 
" Who is so destitute of common sense," he asks, " as 
to imagine that the work of building, or weaving, or 
moulding vessels out of clay is an art, but that oratory, 
the greatest and noblest of works, has attained such 
a height of excellence without being an art ? " f Still, 
it must be said that the question in his mind is not so 
much a discrimination between art and science as it is 
between artistic oratory and natural oratory. Quintilian 
treated the subject so broadly as to become a conspicuous 
example of those ancient writers who, according to Dr. 
Whately, " thought it necessary to include, as belonging 
to the art, everything that could conduce to the attain- 
ment of the object proposed," and " introduced into 
their systems treatises on law, morals, politics, etc., on 
the ground that a knowledge of these subjects was 
requisite to enable a man to speak well on them ; and 
even insisted on virtue as an essential qualification of 
a perfect orator." J Dr. Campbell's title, Pliilosophy of 
Rhetoric, suggests a scientific treatise, and such is the 
character of his very able book. Dr. Blair says if his 

* Part 1, chap. ii. f Book II, chap, xvii, 3. 

f Elements of Rhetoric, Introduction. 



THE FUNCTION OF RHETORIC. 173 

work has any merit it will consist in an endeavour to sub- 
stitute the application of the principles of reason and 
good sense in the place of artificial and scholastic rhet- 
oric* The same may be said of Dr. Whately's Ele- 
ments as of Dr. Campbell's Philosophy ; the treatment 
is scientific. Something of this confusion of thought and 
practice is no doubt due to the sense of the term " art " 
bequeathed by antiquity to modern times that has been 
remarked upon. Still, it would be wrong to suppose 
that such writers as Campbell and Whately did not see 
the distinction. 

The authors of the text-books in current use tend 
decidedly to follow the old model. One prolific writer 
defines rhetoric as " the art of efiicient communication." 
" It is the art," he says, " to the principles of which, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, a good writer or speaker must 
conform." This definition is found in a book entitled 
The Principles of Ehetoric. Moreover, the author de- 
fends his definition by saying that rhetoric " is an art, 
not a science ; for it neither observes, nor discovers, nor 
classifies ; but it shows how to convey from one mind to 
another the results of observation, discovery, or classifica- 
tion ; it uses knowledge, not as knowledge, but as pow- 
er." f Yes ; but rhetoric does observe, discover, and clas- 
sify its own processes. Another popular writer gives us 
the following definition : " Rhetoric, therefore, is the art 
of expressing one's thoughts with skill, of giving to one's 
composition the qualities that it ought to have in order to 
accomplish its author's design." J And such is the gen- 
eral tenor of this class of works. * 

* Lecture i. 

f A. S. Hill : The Principles of Rhetoric, Introduction. 
:j: Genung : Outlines of Rhetoric, Introduction. 

* Dr. D. J. Hill observes that the rhetorical process is complete 



174 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

Now, with all deference to authority, we may say that 
there are plainly three points of view from which rhetoric 
may be considered, as follows : — 

1. It is a science : it is occupied with the principles 
that underlie the expression of thought by means of lan- 
guage. These principles are laws of the human mind ; 
they are discovered by psychological analysis of the mind, 
and are confirmed by the study of literary masterpieces. 

2. It is an art in the reflective sense of that term : it 
lays down the rules, precepts, or methods that govern the 
expression of thought by means of language. These rules 
are deduced from the corresponding principles. 

3. Ehetoric is also practice or exercise in the expres- 
sion of thought. Moreover, this is the original significa- 
tion of the word. 

Slight examination of the text-books on rhetoric in 
current use suffices to show that they contain matter which 
falls under every one of these heads. They are partly sci- 
entific and partly practical ; they contain some principles 
or laws, some rules or precepts, some exercises or practical 
lessons. They are therefore a compound of science and 
of art under both aspects of art. 

We come now to the real subject of the present chap- 
ter. This is the educational worth of rhetoric as taught, 
or as it should be taught, in schools. As everything that 
needs to be said of the primal value of exercises in com- 

only when the ideas of the speaker or writer are " referred to the 
pre-existing ideas of the person addressed in such a manner that 
they will affect the desired change." " All mental changes," he 
says, " take place in accordance with certain laws," and then pro. 
pounds this definition : " As an art, rhetoric communicates ideas 
according to these laws ; as a science, it discovers and establishes 
these laws. Rhetoric is therefore the science of the laws of effective 
discourse." — (The Science of Rhetoric, Introduction.) 



THE FUNCTION OF RHETORIC. 175 

position has been said already, we may confine our atten- 
tion to principles and rules, with incidental remarks on 
the third topic. 

As mental disciplines the science and the art of rhet- 
oric have the same kind of value as the other studies 
belonging to the philosophic group. They stimulate ob- 
servation and analysis. They deal with the philosophy 
of effective expression by means of language. They take 
hold both of thought and of the medium by which it is 
conveyed. Ehetoric deals with the universal element of 
expression ; or, as Aristotle says, " It is conversant, not 
with any one distinct class of subjects, but like logic [is 
of universal applicability] " ; or again, " Its business is 
not absolute persuasion, but to consider on every subject 
what means of persuasion are inherent in it." * Hence, 
psychological elements are involved. 

It has been contended that rhetoric is a valuable moral 
discipline. This is a favourite view of Quintilian, who re- 
turns to it again and again. He insists that virtue is an 
element of oratory. If it be objected that a vicious man 
may succeed in an exordium, a statement of facts, or a 
series of arguments, he replies that so a robber may show 
the virtue of fortitude and a slave the virtue of endur- 
ance.f Dr. Whately corrects Quintilian's exaggerated 
view, saying that building materials are no part of archi- 
tecture, although it is impossible to build without them, 
or subject-matter a part of rhetoric because there can be 
no speech or writing without it ; and " that though virtue 
and the good reputation it procures 'add materially to the 
speaker's influence, they are no more to be, for that rea- 
son, considered as belonging to the orator as such than 
wealth, rank, or a good person, which manifestly have a 

* Book I, chap. ii. f Book II, chap. ii. 



176 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

tendency to procure the same effect." * The real question 
lies deeper : it is the relation of aesthetics and ethics, and 
will be touched in the ensuing paragraph. 

Ehetoric is a culture study as well as a disciplinary 
one. It fits the mind for the keener and more rational 
enjoyment of works of rhetorical art. AVhile the enjoy- 
ments of taste — the sentiment of the beautiful as an abso- 
lute quality — is native to the mind, these enjoyments are 
greatly strengthened and elevated by cultivation. The 
notion that there is a universal standard of taste is a part 
of that sentimental view of human nature which came in 
with Rousseau. The rustic who said the paint on Rosa 
Bonheur's Horse Fair could not have cost more than 
ten francs had not studied aesthetics. On the negative 
side the argument is equally convincing. Men can not 
constantly follow their chosen vocations, but must have 
avocations as well. Answering the question. How shall 
the vacant spaces in life be filled up ? Dr. Blair says that 
it can not be done more agreeably in itself, and more con- 
sistently with the dignity of the human mind, than in the 
entertainments of taste and the study of literature. " He 
who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these has 
always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement 
for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many 
a pernicious passion. He is not in hazard of being a dan- 
ger to himself. He is not obliged to fly low company or 
to court the rest of loose pleasures in order to cure the 
tediousness of existence." f The tapping of the fountains 
of the higher enjoyments — the opening up of the nobler 
tastes — is a godsend to any person, and particularly to any 
one who tends toward coarse pleasures. 

It is to bo feared that the reasons assigned above for 

* Introduction. f Lecture L 



THE FUNCTION OF EHETORIC. 177 

the study of rhetoric will not prove very convincing to 
many minds. At least, we must boldly face the question 
that the typical American puts to everything, " What is its 
practical value ? " The question may be subdivided : Is 
literary and oratorical skill desirable or not ? Does the 
study of rhetoric conduce to the gaining of such skill, and 
if so, to what extent ? Fortunately, the second question 
is the only one that we need to consider. 

The confidence with which the old writers laid down 
their rules is well known to all persons who have read 
their books. Butler's well-known lines — 

" All a rhetorician's rules 
Teach him but to name his tools " — 

express the sceptical view of their value. At the pres- 
ent time, the opinion of many teachers and critics of 
education runs in this diregtion. Let us see if we can 
discover where the truth lies. 

The rules of rhetoric are of two kinds, mechanical 
and psychological. The rules for capitalization plainly 
belong to the first class. There is a mental convenience, 
to be sure, in some of them, as the one that requires a 
sentence to begin with a capital letter ; but this rational 
element is so slight that we may drop it out of sight al- 
together. These rules are plainly conventional. Much 
the same may be said of punctuation. A punctuation 
scheme is mechanical but extremely convenient. It is, 
indeed, based on the articulations of thought, and re- 
quires clear insight, but this does not remove the subject 
from the mechanical category. Again, the rule that 
limits the use of words to the idiom of the language is 
also conventional. If it be said that the use of domestic 
words rather than foreign ones, or of live words in prefer- 
ence to dead ones, consults economy of effort, we may 
reply that the inhibition of slang is often enforced at the 



178 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

cost of energy. Purity of diction rests on the conven- 
tionalities of speech, and can never be absokitely secured 
in a living language. 

Now, it must be clear to everybody that some mechan- 
ical rules are indispensable to correct writing. It is not 
permitted even to genius to capitalize and punctuate just 
as it pleases, or not at all. Such rules make up the tech- 
nique of composition. Still further, powerful as imita- 
tion is, no one will learn through it the arts of capitaliza- 
tion and punctuation. There must be rules, practice, and 
criticism. These rules may be furnished by a teacher 
rather than a book, but that makes no difference. 
Neither will imitation be found an effectual safeguard 
even in respect to purity of diction. Some forbidden 
words are likely to find their way into the vocabulary of 
the best-bred boys and girls, while an abundance will flow 
into tlie vocabulary of the majority. Hence the ques- 
tion, " How shall the barbarisms, and especially the slang, 
that infest popular speech be kept out of the written 
style of schoolboys and schoolgirls ? " I have strongly 
recommended the constant use of good literature as a 
catharsis in English. Still, something more is necessary 
than merely to get pupils as far as possible to read good 
books and hear good conversations, important as these 
things are ; there must be, as before, a resort to faithful 
correction. Experience shows that the pupil is little 
likely wholly to grow off his more inveterate faults, and 
resort must be had to the pruning knife. 

Thp psychological elements of rhetoric are facts of 
the human mind. Such are the rules for propriety and 
precision of diction ; they directly affect a writer's effi- 
ciency, for if words are used in strange senses, or if they 
mean more or less than the writer means, the reader is 
thrown into confusion. Imitation is the mainstay in secur- 



THE FUNCTION OF RHETORIC. 179 

ing tliese qualities, but it alone will not prove effectual. 
Again, the rules prescribed for the construction of sen- 
tences are purely psychological. Imitation is here less 
powerful than in matters that are more mechanical, and 
more depends upon the writer's creative faculties. It is 
manifest, for example, that the writer who has had his 
mind centred on the rule for unity is a much more com- 
petent critic of his own composition or of the composition 
of another than the writer who has not had such training ; 
and that his criticisms, if persisted in, will favourably affect 
his own style. To be more definite, it will hardly be denied 
that the student who has grasped the precept that changes 
of the central subject of thought in a sentence destroy 
unity is more likely to keep his eye on this quality than 
the student who has not done so. Similar reasoning will 
hold of all the other essential proprieties of style. Study 
of the rule will secure a more careful thinking-out of the 
matter, and so better sentences. In numerous places I 
have laid stress on freedom and spontaneity in writing. 
What is here said of rules does not conflict with that doc- 
trine ; for the beneficial effect of criticism flows into style 
through unconscious cerebration. It is in this way that 
a second nature is created. 

The current text-books give much space to figures of 
speech, and we may well consider that branch of the sub- 
ject. However, the only question that we need to answer 
isj wdiether the writer who studies rhetoric will handle his 
figures better than the writer who does not. 

First, it is clear that the definitions of figures express 
facts of the mind. The mind aflBrms the likeness and 
the sameness of things different ; it delights in sharp con- 
trasts and in brief pointed sayings ; it attributes life to 
what is dead and brings the absent into its presence ; it 
uses the name of one thing for another, and also ex- 



180 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

changes the whole and the part. Is the careful discrimi- 
nation of one of these figures from another, as simile 
from metai^hor, or synecdoche from metonomy, of prac- 
tical utility in the expression of thought ? It may be 
answered that in respect to nothing is the young and am- 
bitious writer of an active imagination more likely to go 
astray than in respect to figures. Still further, such a 
writer can hardly fail to derive advantage from a clearer 
thinking out of the doctrine of figures and the definitions 
of the leading figures separately. He may not think 
" personification " or " metaphor " as he writes, but his 
thinking will influence his writing nevertheless. Still 
more may be claimed for the rules relating to figures. 
The exuberant writer needs the discipline of good criti- 
cism as well as the influence of good models. And criti- 
cism always means rules. Eeference may be made to the 
rules in regard to basing figures on distant resemblances, 
to putting two or more metaphors in one sentence, and 
the overcrowding and mixing up of figures in general. 

Let us take a broader view of the subject. In his 
well-known essay entitled The Philosophy of Style, Her- 
bert Spencer finds the causes of force in language in the 
principle of economy of the mental energies and sensi- 
bilities. After quoting some of the familiar adages, as 
that long sentences fatigue the reader, parentheses and 
involved constructions should be avoided, and Saxon- 
English words should be preferred to Latin-English, he 
thus states the principle that explains them : 

" On seeking for some clue to the law underlying 
these current maxims, we may see shadowed forth in 
many of them the importance of economizing the reader's 
or hearer's attention. To so present ideas that they may 
be apprehended with the least possible mental effort is 
the desideratum toward which most of the rules above 



THE FUNCTION OF RHETORIC. 181 

quoted point. When we condemn writing that is wordy, 
or confused, or intricate — when we praise this style as 
easy, and blame that as fatiguing — we consciously or un- 
consciously assume this desideratum as our standard of 
judgment. Eegarding language as an apparatus of sym- 
bols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in 
a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better 
arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced. 
In either case, whatever force is absorbed by the machine 
is deducted from the result. A reader or listener has at 
each moment but a limited amount of mental power 
available. To recognise and interpret the symbols pre- 
sented to him requires part of this power ; to arrange 
and combine the images suggested requires a further part ; 
and only that part which remains can be used for real- 
izing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and 
attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, 
the less time and attention can be given to the contained 
idea, and the less vividly will that idea be conceived." 

The whole essay is an argument to show that this 
principle embraces the main elements of style. Whether 
Mr. Spencer is correct throughout in his contention or not, 
it is certainly true that the student who first grasps this 
principle sees the subject of expression in a new light, 
and is likely also to think his thoughts more clearly and 
to express them in stronger and more clarified diction. 
The simple idea that language is a vehicle to be used with 
largest effect and greatest economy can hardly fail to 
affect his style beneficially. To the proposition that a 
clear conception of the principles of expression will tend 
to improve expression, it is no reply to say that Homer 
never studied rhetoric, or that Dr. Franklin never went 
to college. The study of principles makes models effect- 
ive. On this point Professor Minto may be quoted. 
14 



182 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

*' I take it that the main use of rhetorical principles 
... is to quicken the beginner's natural judgment in his 
study of examples. He is placed in the midst of a host 
of writers, good and bad. The most effective writers nat- 
urally influence him most. He might learn from them as 
much as he wants of the art of composition without auy 
guidance. He imitates what he admires, irrespective of 
all guidance. All of us acquire in this way the greater 
part of what skill we have. But while every great writer 
has his own inimitable charm, all effective writing is so in 
virtue of its compliance with certain general conditions* 
These general conditions the student may learn insensibly, 
but the most rudimentary of them admit of being stated, 
and the statement may stimulate and guide the student's 
own powers of observation and execution." * 

For example, if sophomores in and out of college 
should lay hold of the rule that Minto thus states — " One 
object of language, perhaps we should not say the object 
of language, is the conveyance of ideas or feelings from 
one mind to another " — how much ambitious writing 
would be amended ! Or if the whole array of writers who 
contribute to the current volume of printed matter should 
closely study Minto's amplification of this rule, how much 
vagueness, obscurity, and verbosity, with consequent loss 
of time and mental energy, would be saved ! 

"It is sometimes said that the object of language 
is to express thought. This is a misleading description 
for the student of composition. We want not merely 
to express, but to impress or communicate, which is not 
quite the same thing. In using language we have to 
consider not merely the putting of our thoughts into 
words, — the utterance or expression of what is in our 



* Plain Principles of Prose Composition, p. 10. 



THE FUNCTION OF RHETORIC. 183 

minds ; we have to consider also how to get our thoughts 
into the minds of others. Utterance might be compara- 
tively easy, but the utterance must be such as to find an 
entrance elsewhere. We have not merely to pour the 
water out of the bottle. If this were all, we might trickle 
gently or gurgle and splutter convulsively as we pleased, 
with much the same result. We have to pour out in such 
a way that every drop may, if possible, be got into another 
bottle." * 

To the arguments that have been presented in favour 
of the study of rhetoric, it may be replied that they as- 
sume greater persistence in the study and in the effort to 
improve one's composition than can be safely taken for 
granted. The good work that is begun in the high school, 
it may be said, is soon laid aside ; and no matter how hard 
the teacher may have struggled to lift him to a high level 
of expression, the pupil soon falls back to the wonted 
level of his mind. The same may be said of many stu- 
dents who receive the severer discipline of the college. It 
is impossible to deny force to such a reply. The ease 
with which persons who have been trained in schools fall 
into slovenly habits of expression, and particularly of 
writing, on leaving school, is extremely discouraging, and 
would be surprising if we did not see so much of it. Still, 
it is not true that, even in the cases of the majority, the 
effect of rhetorical training is wholly lost ; while in the 
cases of a minority it undeniably contributes materially to 
the formation of good style. *" 

Accordingly, I believe in putting rhetoric in the high- 
school course, say about fifty lessons. It should come in 
the second half of the course, and, if possible, at the be- 
ginning of the last year. Put in this place, relative ma- 

"* Plain Principles of Prose Composition, p. 12, 



184 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

turity of mind is secured, while there is also opportunity 
for a full year's practice in the light of rhetorical prin- 
ciples. It should be elementary in character. It should 
deal with the broader elements of the subject, shunning 
intricacies and niceties. It should be theoretical, but 
should be fully illustrated by examples, and be constantly 
re-enforced by practice in composition. It should sum 
up or codify the work already done in composition in 
respect to principles.* The examples that are used, as 
under the head of purity of style or of figures, should 
be chosen with particular care. Eeference should be 
had, in choosing them, to the pupil's habits and sur- 
roundings, keeping an eye on the practical end. The 
examples should be palpable violations of sound princi- 
ples, and should not be multiplied to weariness. Many of 
the text-books now in use are overloaded with " examples " 
and " exercises " to be corrected, some of which, moreover, 
are faulty only in the eye of a perverse critical ingenuity. 
Above all, rhetoric should be taught by a competent 
teacher. If definitions are merely memorized, and rules 
handled in a merely mechanical way, little benefit will re- 
sult ; but if the teacher meets the conditions that have 
been laid down, the study will be followed by good results 
along several lines. Students will obtain a broader out- 
look of the subject of expression. Many will form the 
habit of studying literature and style more closely. Some 
will get into the way of analyzing their own thoughts and 
their own style more thoroughly. Those who go to col- 
lege will receive needed preparation for college work in 
the same subject ; and those who do not, as a class, will 
be the better educated for their pains. 

* See Report of the Conference on English to the Committee 
of Ten, p. 91. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE FUN'CTIOK or CRITICISM. 

Ik preceding chapters various observations have been 
made concerning the function and method of criticism in 
teaching the language-arts. It is deemed necessary, how- 
ever, to give the subject the advantage of a formal 
chapter. 

Criticism as here used is not another name for the 
science of sesthetics, which is the sense that Lord Karnes 
puts upon the word in his well-known work,* but is the 
name of an art. Of practical pedagogical questions, few 
are harder to answer than the one that the term used in 
this connection suggests. The heading does not imply 
that what is true of any one of the language- arts is true 
of all of them, but only that so much is true of all of them 
that they may be advantageously brought under one gen- 
eral view. First, we must grasp the facts out of which 
the difficulty referred to arises. 

1. All good expression with voice or pen is free and 
spontaneous. The good talker, the good reader, the good 
writer is untrammelled. This state of freedom relates as 
well to the language in which the thought is clothed as to 
the thought itself. Just as far as any cause interrupts 
this freedom, it interferes with one of the essential condi- 
tions of good thinking and of good expression. Every 

* Elements of Criticism. 
185 



186 TEACHING THE LAXGUAGE-AHTS. 

disturbing influence involves the loss to the work imme- 
diately in hand of whatever mental power it itself absorbs. 
This, as Mr. Spencer has explained in the passage quoted 
in the last chapter, is why language as a conscious art 
gets in the way of both expressing and receiving thought. 
Manifestly, language is like any other vehicle — whatever 
power is required to keep the wheels turning is subtracted 
from the efiBciency of the machine. It is therefore a plain 
case of reducing friction to a minimum. 

What has now been said is in full consonance with the 
sound theory of acquiring the language-arts. The word 
" expression " may imply a forcing or squeezing out of 
what is expressed, as in a winepress ; but in speech or 
composition it is not so. A good speech or composition 
is never really made ; it is not the product of a force that 
works from without ; it does not come from the external 
application of methods and rules ; it is rather the product 
of a force that works from within, or, better still, it is a 
growth from some root of knowledge or feeling in the 
mind itself. Without this inward creative force, which is 
far superior to conscious rules, no really good work can be 
done. Criticism has its place ; but we never think of 
Shakespeare as building up his plays by foot-rule and 
plumb-bob. On this point nothing can be better than 
the following sentences from Professor W. C. Wilkinson : 
" Stimulus, more than criticism, is Avhat the forming lit- 
erary mind requires. Vigorous growth can better be 
trusted than the most laborious pruning knife, to give 
symmetry of form. Besides, only vigorous growth re- 
sponds to the pruning knife with desirable results."* 
Still another writer has said : 

" When Mozart was asked how he set to work to com- 

* Quoted by Genung : The Study of Rhetoric. 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. 187 

pose a symphony he replied, ' If yon once thinh how yon 
are to do it, you will never write anything worth hearing ; 
I write because I can not help it.' Jean Paul remarks of 
the poet's work : ' The character must appear living before 
you, and you must hear it, not merely see it ; it must, as 
takes place in dreams, dictate to you, not you to it. A 
poet who must reflect whether, in a given case, he will 
make his character say Yes, or ISi o, to the devil with him ! ' 
An author may be as much astonished at the brilliancy 
of his unwilled inspirations as his most partial reader. 
* That's splendid ! ' exclaimed Thackeray, as he struck the 
table in admiring surprise at the utterance of one of his 
characters in the story he was writing." * 

2. When children come to school, they have in most 
cases already contracted faults of expression — faults of 
articulation, pronunciation, grammar, and style. Few 
indeed are the children who are free from all these blem- 
ishes. Imitation is not a selective art, but it catches with 
great impartiality whatever comes within the sweep of its 
net. Furthermore, the child is reasonably certain to con- 
tract new faults if allowed to . go on his own way. No 
amount of care on the part of jDarent or teacher can 
keep him wholly from bad models. Plainly, it would not 
answer to allow him to go on his way alone, even if that 
were possible. But it is not possible ; the pupil must have 
positive direction, and it is not improbable that this will 
sometimes be wrong, and that his teachers will set him 
some bad examples. In these circumstances originates 
the necessity of criticism — what Professor Whitney calls 
" constant use and practice under never-failing watch and 
correction." 



f Dr. E. L. Youmans : The Culture Demanded by Modern Life, 
pp. 382, 383. 



188 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

3. But the moment that any person who is engaged in 
expression begins to feel the " watch and correction " his 
mind is thrown into a self-conscious and abnormal state. 
He ceases to be wholly creative and becomes partly critical. 
His mind is divided, or " distracted." Moreover, rules at 
once become disturbing elements. For a talker, reader, 
or writer to give conscious attention to his errors, or con- 
sciously to apply the rules of reading, grammar, spelling, 
or rhetoric, is to sacrifice to an equal degree his immediate 
end. One of two things will happen : he will gain in cor- 
rectness and lose in force, or he will lose in both correct- 
ness and force. 

Such is the problem that the teacher of English has 
to confront. What is to be done ? 

One thing is clear. Because correction interferes 
with freedom we can not therefore set it aside, or unduly 
restrict its province. We can not consent to errors and 
vulgarisms because they are " spontaneous." We must 
discover some way of harmonizing the two factors, free- 
dom and criticism. The question is one that confronts 
the teacher of any art. It is the imposition of restraint 
upon creative force — the adjustment of principles and 
rules to practice. It involves the practical relation of 
knowing and doing. It is an end that must be reached, as 
Eadestock says, " by the aid of one of Education's trusty 
servants — the formation of habit, which changes func- 
tions, of whatever kind, originally performed but slowly 
and with effort, into rapid and skilful actions, performed 
with dexterity and ease ; it makes study easier, and 
finally builds the bridge uniting theory with practice by 
changing dead knowledge into a living power." * IIow 
shall we build this bridge ? At this point the language- 

* Habit, p. 4. 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. 189 

arts offer greater difficulties tlian some others. A ma- 
jority of people are peculiarly sensitive to criticism of 
their language, perhaps because language is a high test of 
cultivation. Fortunately, however, young children are less 
sensitive than older children or adults ; indeed, if children 
are properly handled from the beginning, much of this 
timidity and shrinking may be avoided. 

But to return to our question, What is to be done ? 
How shall we build the bridge uniting theory and prac- 
tice ? While the following practical suggestions may not 
include the whole ground, they will nevertheless cover a 
considerable portion of it : — 

1. In early years correction must rest directly upon 
authority ; the parent or teacher must be the standard of 
correctness and taste. What is wanted is practice, and 
rules and reasons would be out of place. In respect to 
pronunciation, the pupil does not resort to the dictionary, 
or, if he does, he can not apply the key of sounds. The 
long, the short, and the obscure sounds of a, for example, 
can mean nothing to him until he has learned them by 
practice. 

2. Correction to be effective must be repeated over 
and over again. It is the constant dropping that wears 
away the stone. Many are the strokes required to build 
the bridge. Hence, when the faults of children are nu- 
merous, they should not be attacked all at once, but in 
successive order. 

3. The faults under correction at any time, both in 
respect to kind and number, should be chosen with refer- 
encato the child's age and mental progress. Faults of 
pronunciation and of grammar should be taken in hand 
as soon as the child begins to commit them ; but faults of 
rhetoric, as of construction, and particularly of a refined 
character, should be left until a later time. For the 



190 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

teacher to attack errors before tlie pupil is ripe for the 
attack, is most wearisome and disheartening alike to 
pupil and teacher. If needed stimulus is furnished, 
and good models are kept constantly in view, the pupil 
will in time grow off not a few excrescences that the 
teacher will, at an earlier date, fail to cut away with his 
pruning knife. Here as elsewhere no little labour is lost 
because it is done out of due time. 

4. The teacher must not expect too much either at 
the end of the course or at any stage in its progress. 
This is indeed but a phase of the point last made, but it 
deserves special emphasis. College students going as 
teachers into high schools are not unlikely to be exacting. 
It must be remembered that some persons will never be- 
come good writers. To write well calls for creative power 
and literary taste, while many persons have been denied 
these gifts. Only a minority of the children in school 
will ever become masters of anything deserving to be 
called a literary style ; and we must be content to see the 
majority reach, as the result of drill and practice, a formal 
correctness and propriety. Much the same is true of 
reading. The ready intuition, the rapid grasp of ideas, 
the light of imagination, the quick feeling, the flexible 
and well-modulated voice, which are essential to good 
reading, are gifts of a high order and are somewhat rare. 
No doubt practice can do much to develop these qualities, 
but it can not create them. 

5. As the pupil mounts to the upper grades, he should 
be gradually introduced to rules and reasons. The per- 
sonal authority of the teacher must slowly retire into the 
background. In other words, the art of criticism, which 
at first should not extend beyond " This is right " and 
" That is wrong," must be slowly turned toward the 
science of criticism. In this respect the language-arts are 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. 191 

not all alike. Pronunciation and grammar rest on usage 
or convention ; so do the meanings of words ; and so also 
do some features of rhetoric, as capitalization and punctua- 
tion, but the rules relating to clearness, energy, emphasis, 
and harmony of style are direct outgrowths of psycho- 
logical facts. The laws of effective speech or writing are 
laws of the human mind ; and it is . idle to present them 
until they can be understood. 

6. It is all-important that the teacher should correct 
the pupil's exercises, both oral and written, in a good 
spirit. Due pains must be taken not to put the pupil to 
shame, lest otherwise reactionary tendencies set in at once.* 
It must never be forgotten that while criticism looks to 
purely intellectual ends, these ends lie proximate to the 
pupil's sensibility. The channels of the young mind will 
not flow with clear and bright ideas if they are running 
turbid or violent with feelings that the teacher has excited 
by unnecessary or unkind criticism. In no other school 
exercise is it so necessary that the pupil shall be self-pos- 
sessed as in composition, oral or written. Xo wheels are 
sooner blocked than the wheels of expression. As the 
pupil grows in years and in self-mastery, he can be,, and 
he should be, treated with more severity, particularly if 

* " Originality is a shy flower, and will unfold only in a conge- 
nial atmosphere. One may as well grasp a sea-anemone and expect 
it to show its beauty, as ask a child to write from his own expe- 
rience when he expects every sentence to be dislocated in order to 
be improved. The sentences need improvement, no doubt, but that 
improvement will come under the influence of good models and 
quiet suggestions. The teacher of composition should never forget 
that ' the life is more than meat and the body than raiment ' ; that 
the spirit and thought of any exercise are more than the technical 
dress, and that if the former are developed, the latter will not be 
wanting." — (Miss H. L. Keeler : Preface to Studies in English Com- 
position.) 



192 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE- ARTS. 

careless ; but the wind must be tempered to the shorn 
lamb. Still, as said before, much depends upon the regi- 
men under which the child has been brought up. If he 
has been trained to express his ideas in writing from the 
beginning of his school life, and has been accustomed to 
well-tempered correction, the normal child will show little 
of that hesitation and fear which are so characteristic of 
youth who are required to prepare essays without having 
received the needed preparation, and he will consider the 
correction of his language exercises as much a matter of 
course as the correction of his arithmetic or grammar ex- 
ercises. Besides, there should be commendation as well as 
blame. In the sage words of Quintilian : " In amending 
what requires correction, let him [the teacher] not be 
harsh, and least of all not reproachful ; for that very 
circumstance, that some tutors blame as if they hated, 
deters many young men from their proposed course of 
study." * 

7. To make possible that freedom which is so essential 
to the best work, many of the pupil's exercises, after he has 
made a fair start at least, should pass without any review 
or criticism other than his own. Criticism may be over- 
done. " It is a capital mistake," says Professor Wilkinson, 
" for boards of college oversight to suppose that they have 
done the best for the literary education of young men 
when they have provided them with an instructor who is 
willing to go through uiLlimited drudgery in the way of 
minute rudimentary criticism of their essays with the 
pencil or the pen." It must be remembered particularly 
that a degree of exuberance is natural to pupils who have 
reached a certain stage of advancement. In discussing 
this subject, too, Quintilian shows his usual good sense. 

* Institutes of Oratory, ii 2, 7. 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. I93 

" The remedy for exuberance is easy," lie says ; " bar- 
renness is incurable by any labour." 

8. The pupil must be taught to play the critic himself 
— that is, to observe and correct mistakes of speech and 
composition. Such a habit naturally begins with the er- 
rors of others, but its proper end is self-criticism. The 
teacher can render, the better pupils particularly, no 
greater service than to start them well on this road. 

It must be remembered that the end of criticism, as 
we deal with it, is wholly practical. It aims to correct 
faults and to develop excellences, and if it fails here it 
fails wholly. No doubt the science of criticism has dis- 
ciplinary value, but this value is no reason why it should 
be brought into the elementary school or the high school. 
But criticism to be practical must be remembered, and be 
applied in the preparation of new exercises. Obviously, 
forgotten criticism is useless. Furthermore, the applica- 
tion of critical tests or rules involves some impairment of 
unconscious freedom, some growth of linguistic self-con- 
sciousness. But there is no helping it. Some disturbance 
from this source is inevitable. Two points, however, 
should be well guarded. One is to reduce the disturb- 
ance to a minimum in the first place, and the second to 
eliminate it as rapidly as possible. Comparative immu- 
nity from this disturbance is enjoyed by those persons 
who become so familiar with the critic that he loses his 
terrors in their eyes. 

If errors are duly corrected ; if at the proper time rules 
are steadily borne in upon the mind ; if the habit of self- 
criticism is created ; if the pupil consorts with good mod- 
els — the bridge uniting theory and practice will be built, 
slowly indeed but well. Step by step corrections and rules 
will fall out of the conscious mind, because they are being 
transformed into habit, and self-criticism will become 



194 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE- ARTS. 

mainly a matter of revision, after the first glow of speech 
or composition is over. The pupil who perversely puts 
his apostrophe on the wrong side of his s, and uses the 
objective form of the pronoun in room of the nomi- 
native form, will come to speak or write as he should 
do without once thinking of his former errors. He 
will develop a second nature that is stronger than first 
nature. 

Because speaking and writing under restraint are hard 
and painful, we should not resort to license ; the difficulty 
and pain will vanish as restraint passes into habit. Those 
persons, if any, who never need to create a second linguistic 
nature may be congratulated on their happy escape. But 
in the majority of cases the teacher must bend every effort 
to the end of transmuting knowledge into power. In so far 
as the art of composition is self-conscious, it is not un- 
like the art of penmanship. Here the aim is to produce 
with ease and skill certain conventional characters. The 
movements and strokes are at first awkward and painful ; 
but as they become correct and automatic they also be- 
come easy and pleasant. Theory passes into practice. This 
transition is the most important one ever made in educa- 
tion, and particularly in morals : the transition from 
knowledge to power. 

Something should be said of the " Nature " rules that 
are laid down in every book that deals with the language- 
arts. ISTo exhortations are more common than these : 
" Speak according to Nature," " Read naturally," " Follow 
Nature in writing." These precepts, however, are but 
special applications of a general law that is thus formu- 
lated : " We must proceed in accordance with Nature." 
But what is the Nature that we are so earnestly com- 
manded to follow ? 

Perhaps Aristotle was the first writer whose books 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. 195 

have come down to us that undertook to define the term.* 
From the day that he gave his definitions, the part that 
Nature plays in education has been more or less recog- 
nised, and especially since Eousseau wrote his epoch-mak- 
ing book. Much that has been written upon the subject, 
not to say most, has been extremely vague and mislead- 
ing. A discriminating writer' has said that " probably 
nine tenths of the popular sophistries on the subject of 
education would be cleared away by clarifying the word 
* Nature. ' " f 

Now the precept to " follow Nature " can not mean 
that education in talking, reading, and writing shall be 
without direction of any kind. Such a canon would ex- 
clude reading and writing altogether, and also speaking 
according to a cultivated standard, because these are all 
arts. This can not therefore be what is meant by speak- 
ing, reading, and writing " naturally." Nor, secondly, can 
the precept mean that the child shall be taught the lan- 
guage-arts, but shall be left without guidance or direc- 
tion. That would be absurd, since there is no telling 
what pranks " Nature," left to herself would play, and 
since, strictly speaking, the requirement would involve a 
contradiction. Hence we are again thrown back upon 
the question. What is the Nature that is set up as a cri- 
terion to bo followed ? 

Professor Davidson, in his admirable chapter on Na- 
ture and Education, tells us that, applied to living things, 
the term " Nature " is used in two distinct senses, which 
" are often confounded," to the great detriment of educa- 
tional theory and practice. " In one sense it is the charac- 
ter or type with which a thing starts on a separate career, 

* The Metaphysics, Book IV, chap. iv. 

f S. R. Sill : The Atlantic Monthly, February, 1883, p. 178. 



196 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

and which, without any effort on the part of that thing, 
but solely with the aid of natural forces, determines that 
career." The acorn, the bean, the chick, the whelp, and 
the cub are given as examples. " In the other sense, ' Na- 
ture 'means that highest possible reality which a living 
thing, through a series of voluntary acts originating within 
or without it, may be made to attain." * These he calls 
the " original " and the " ideal " senses of the word. Ob- 
viously, it is in the second of the two senses that the term 
is used, or should be used, in dealing with rational edu- 
cation. 

The latest translator of the Emile, subjecting the 
" Nature " of that book to analysis, finds that it contains 
the three elements of simplicity, reality, and personal ex- 
perience. " Simplify your methods as much as possible ; 
distrust the artificial aids that complicate the process of 
teaching ; bring your pupil face to face with reality ; con- 
nect symbol with substance ; make learning, so far as pos- 
sible, a process of personal discovery; depend as little as 
possible on mere authority. This is my interpretation of 
Kousseau's precept, ' Follow Nature.' " f Nothing more 
definite than this, I conceive, can be extracted from the 
Nature doctrine in education. While this is much — very 
much — it still leaves the teacher who is seeking for prac- 
tical guidance at a loss as to details. About all, therefore, 
that the " Nature " rules in the language-arts can mean is 
this : The teacher and the pupil alike should study closely 
the composition to be read, and the subject to be handled 
in speech or essay ; they should attend to the character of 
the thought and feeling, respect tlie proprieties of time 
and j)lace, and inquire what is " natural," all of which is 

* Education of the Greek People, chap. i. 
f Dr. W. H. Payne : Introduction. 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM. I97 

but another name for the exercise of good sense. The 
teacher should regard the general facts of the mind and 
the individuality of the pupil ; she should, as Matthew 
Arnold might have said, " let her intelligence play freely 
upon the facts involved in each case." The " Xature " 
rules assume that there is some common standard of ex- 
cellence, some general ideas or usages in^relation to what 
is good and what is bad ; and this assumption we may 
safely accept. To accept it, however, does not imply that 
this standard is to be ascertained by consulting each indi- 
vidual man, or by throwing the question open to a popu- 
lar vote ; it is, rather, the opinion and the usage of those 
most competent to extract from the facts their deepest 
meaning. 

Upon the whole, it must, therefore, be said that the 
" Nature " rules are rather vague and indefinite for prac- 
tical guidance in the schoolroom ; that they are, however, 
the only final and authoritative rules that can be given ; 
and that the teacher must, at least within limits, extract 
them from the composition, the subject, the child, and 
the occasion, as they present themselves. Such a quest, 
if successful, can not be sej)arated from good models. 
The teacher who makes it will soon discover that uni- 
formity must be shunned and diversity be cultivated. The 
motto " The style is the man " expresses a profound truth 
which lies at the basis of the " Nature " rules. This is 
the reason why, to refer to a well-known passage in Mr. 
Spencer's Essay, Johnson is pompous and Goldsmith sim- 
ple, one author abrupt, another rhythmical, and a third 
concise. This is the reason why the perfect writer writes 
like Junius when in the Junius frame of mind, like Lamb 
when he feels as Lamb felt, and like Carlyle when in the 
Carlylean mood. 

15 



198 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

In the preceding pages I have emphasized the key 
words to the language-arts, viz., imitation and practice, 
models and correction. The teacher's practical problem 
is to correlate the two main ideas that these words express. 
While the boy who hears good English spoken and read, 
and reads good books, will far distance the boy who does 
not hear such English and read such books, it must not 
be supposed that he will proceed on this pleasant path 
until he wakes up some fine morning to find himself a 
good speaker or a good writer. Nor must it be supposed, 
on the other hand, that the boy of practice and correction 
will attain that end if models and imitations are wanting. 
Both elements are called for ; but models and imitation 
come first, and they are of the greater value. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

TEACHERS OF THE LAKGUAGE-ARTS. 

It is stated in the first chapter of this work that to 
teach English successfully requires a combination of cul- 
tivation, task, judgment, and practical skill not found in 
the common teacher. The unsatisfactory character of 
English instruction in the schools is also ascribed, in part, 
to the incompetency of teachers. Still further, casual ref- 
erences to the teacher question are found scattered through 
the book. A dealing with the topic still more direct and 
definite is, however, called for, and I may fitly bring my 
task to a close with a brief chapter on the qualifications 
of teachers of the language-arts. 

The remarks made hitherto have had principal refer- 
ence to teachers in the more advanced stages of the work. 
In the case of primary teachers, at least those found in 
the first grades, qualifications to teach these arts are the 
principal things to be looked at, pedagogically speaking, 
in selecting them. So very important at this stage of 
progress is instruction in oral speech, in language lessons, 
and in the art of reading ! The qualifications required 
are clear perception of the elements of the arts, their rela- 
tions to real knowledge, and skill in bringing these ele- 
ments into connection with young minds. In the more 
advanced grades, and in the high school, the range of in- 
struction that the teacher is called upon to furnish is 
much wider than in the lower grades, and the language- 

199 



200 TEACHING THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

arts are relatively much less important; still, owing to 
the wider and higher character of the work to be done in 
these arts, far higher attainments in the teacher are neces- 
sary. The idea has seized the minds of some school super- 
intendents and board members, that almost anybody " will 
do " to teach English to children. The fact is just the 
contrary. The teaching of literature in particular can 
not be subjected to the processes that are so successful 
in science, mathematics, and the classics and modern lan- 
guages. In no other high-school chair, perhaps, can an 
incompetent teacher, and particularly one possessed by 
notions and hobbies, do so much harm as in the chair of 
English literature. 

Some remarks have already been made on special 
teachers of English in connection with the subject of con- 
centration. Eeturning to that question, I avow the opinion 
that in the early grades such a teacher would be most un- 
desirable, and that the departmental method of teaching 
in elementary schools is based on false principles. The 
child's mind is one, and, for the most part, his lessons 
should be taught by one teacher. To cut up his mind 
into fragments and piece them out to a group of teachers 
who are likely to know little of what they are severally 
doing, who are certain not to know fully, and who become 
competitors for the child's time and mental energy, is 
most mischievous. In high schools, and especially in the 
first year, specialization is sometimes carried to a harmful 
extent. Still, the time will come when a special teacher 
of English should be employed. On this point the recom- 
mendation of the Conference on English made to the 
Committee of Ten may be quoted with approval, the only 
doubtful point being whether the time set for the advent 
of the special teacher is not too early. 

" In the opinion of the Conference, it is expedient that 



TEACHERS OP THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 201 

the English work during the last two years of the gram- 
mar-school course (including formal grammar, reading, 
and composition) should be in the hands of a special 
teacher or teachers. But the appointment of such teacher 
or teachers should not be held to exclude the instructors 
in other subjects from the oversight of the English of 
their pupils. It is only by cordial co-operation in all de- 
partments that satisfactory results in this direction can be 
obtained. To the lack of such joint effort the present 
unsatisfactory condition of English study in the high 
schools and colleges may be in great part ascribed." * 

What is here said about co-operation among all the 
teachers of the school, in order to secure intensive work, 
and about the special teacher as well, can not be too 
strongly insisted upon. 

But there is a more important question than this one. 
It is far more important to have special exercises in Eng- 
lish than it is to have a special teacher. The doctrine of 
concentration has limits that can not be passed. Lessons 
in geography or arithmetic, and still more lessons in his- 
tory, may be made lessons in English, in reading, even in 
composition, with good results ; but such lessons can not 
be made to answer the purpose of prescribed lessons in 
those subjects. No school exercise is useful m an emi- 
nent degree in more than one direction at the same time. 
Probably the geographical readers, the historical readers, 
the physiological readers, etc., that have appeared within 
the last few years answer a certain purpose, but it is easy 
to overestimate their value. Physiology, geography, and 
history can not be taught successfully by means of general 
reading exercises, nor can reading as an art be taught 
properly by means of such books. There must be specific 

* Report of the Committee of Ten, p. 90. 



202 TEACHIXG THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 

books and exercises for each of these purposes. Two 
studies, and much less a larger number, can not be 
merged into one study. Hence the readers just referred 
to can, at best, be nothing more in their several subjects 
than supplemental reading books. Still more, even if 
there were no psychological objection to turning the Eng- 
lish over to the teachers of the school collectively, to one 
as much as to another, it would be impossible to find 
teachers in sufficient numbers competent to do the work. 
Again, if the English be distributed, assigning reading 
to one teacher, composition to another, and literature to 
a third, all three should be carefully selected. But the 
teacher of literature should be chosen with peculiar care. 
To aptness to teach and sufficient breadth of reading 
should be added literary taste and appreciation, insight or 
penetration, soundness of judgment, correct ideals, and a 
good reading voice. Like other studies, literature can be 
understood only through the apperceiving process ; more- 
over, since literature is a transcript of mental life — an ex- 
pression of thought and feeling — the facts, ideas, and 
images that are essential to its interpretation, on the part 
of both pupil and teacher, must come from the same 
source. This is reason enough why the teacher should be 
a person who has had some experience of life and has ac- 
cumulated some store of thought. In a word, no person 
can succeed in teaching this subject who has not some real 
cultivation. Here, if anywhere, the old Jewish maxim 
must hold : " He who learns of a young master is like a 
man who eats sour grapes, and drinks wine fresh from the 
press ; but he who has a master of mature years is like a 
man who eats ripe and delicious grapes, and drinks old 
wine." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



The bibliograpliy of the subjects treated in this work 
is already very extensive, and is rapidly increasing". The 
text- writers on pedagogy, at least on the practical side, all 
deal with teaching reading, language lessons, composition, 
and grammar ; and some of them with teaching rhetoric 
and English literature. As a group, no subjects are more 
frequently dealt with in the proceedings of teachers' asso- 
ciations, or are more frequently handled by writers in the 
educational press. Numerous articles on these subjects also 
find their way into the magazines. The titles of the works 
that have been freely consulted in the preparation of this 
book are given in footnotes. The principal of these titles 
and a few others are given below, with accompanying 
remarks : 

Collins, John Churton : The Study of English Literature. 
A plea for its recognition and organization at the uni- 
versities. Macmillan & Co., London and New York, 
pp. 160. While this book relates to college or university 
study, it may be read with much advantage by educated 
teachers in the secondary schools. 
Corson, Professor Hiram i Yocal Culture in its Relation to 
Literary Culture (The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1895, p. 
810). The Aims of Literary Study. MacmiUan & Co., 
New York, pp. 153. Both admirable. 
DowDEN, Professor Edward: The Teaching of English 
Literature (New Studies in Literature, p. 419). London : 
Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co. 

203 



204 BlBLIOGRAPnY. 

Fletcher, J. B., and Carpenter, E. R. : Introduction to 
Theme Writing. Allyn & Bacon, pp. 133. For college 
work, but may be used with profit by educated teachers 
in secondary schools. 

Genung, Professor John F. : The Study of Rhetoric. D. C. 
Heath & Co., Boston, pp. 32. 

Hall, Dr. Gr. Stanley : How to Teach Reading. D. C. Heath 
& Co., Boston, pp. 40. Contains good hints for teachers. 

Harris, Dr. W. T. : On the Correlation of Studies in Ele- 
mentary Education. Part Third of the Report of the 
Committee of Fifteen, pp. 230. Contains excellent dis- 
cussion of the educational values of the language-arts. 

Hudson, Rev. H. N. : Preface to Hamlet, English in Schools 
(The Merchant of Venice), and How to use Shakespeare 
in Schools (As You Like It). These references are to the 
author's Shakespeare for Use in Schools and Families. 

HUFFCUT, E. W. : English in the Preparatory Schools. D. 

C. Heath & Co., Boston, pp. 25. A useful monograph. 
Laurie, Professor, S. S. : Lectures on Language and Lin- 
guistic Method in the School. Second edition revised. 
Edinburgh, James Thin ; London, Simpkin &; Marshall, 
pp. 197. The best book on the subject known to me. 

Lowell, James Russell: Books and Libraries (Literary 
and Political Addresses). One of the author's best es- 
says. 

MiNTO, Professor William : Plain Principles of Prose Com- 
position. William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and 
London, pp. 85. Thoroughly sensible and practical. 

Morley, John : On tlie Study of Literature. A university- 
extension address delivered at the Mansion House, 
London, 1887. Macmillan & Co., Loudon, pp. 53. Re- 
published in Aspects of Modern Study, London, Mac- 
millan & Co. 

Newcomer, A. G-. : A Practical Course in English Compo- 
sition. Ginn & Co., Boston, pp. 250. This book is just 
what its title calls it. 

Phillips, J. H. : History and Literature in Grammar Grades, 

D. C. Heath & Co., Boston, pp. 15. 



TEACHINa THE LANGUAGE-ARTS. 205 

Scott, Professor F. N., and Denney, Professor J. V. : Para- 
graph. Writing. Allyn Sc Bacon, Boston, pp. 259. A 
useful treatise ; it makes tlie paragraph, the unit of com- 
position. 

ScuDDER, H. E. : Literature in the Public Schools (The At- 
lantic Monthly, August, 1888, p. 223). 

Spencer, Herbert : Philosophy of Style. The edition 
edited, with introduction and notes, by F. N. Scott, and 
published by Allyn Sc Bacon, Boston, is recommended. 
This celebrated essay, while not to be implicitly accepted, 
may be studied to great advantage by teachers. 

Whitist^y, Professor W. D. : Essentials of English Gram- 
mar for the Use of Schools. Ginn & Co., Boston, pp. 
260. Admirable for teachers. 

Woodward, F. C. : English in the Schools. D. C Heath & 
Co., Boston, pp. 25. Good discussion of the educational 
value of the vernacular. 

Wright, T. H. : Style. Contained in Scott's edition of 
Spencer. See above. 



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